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WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

NEW ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY EDITION. 

VOLUME XXVI. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 



I 





^ Vv^., ^ ^ 

10)1 f TratJelitr 


A Tramp Caravan 


Jo 3. 


... ,u- tfttAr i/rrity Vv - V'-.A-4rf^# 


T-- it* 


« 





THE 


UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 

AKD 


ADDITIONAL CHRISTMAS STORIES 


CHARLES DICKENS 


WITH STEEL-PLATE ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON 
Cbe EiberfiiHe JpreiSS 
1877 






COPTWGHT, 1877, 

Bt HURD AND HOUGHTON. 


The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 


CONTENTS. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 


CHAP. 







PAGB 

I. 

His General Line of Business . ' . 

• 


• 

• 

• 

1 

n. 

The Shipwreck .... 

• 

• 


• 

• 

3 

III. 

Wapping Workhouse 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 18 

IV. 

Two Views of a Cheap Theatre . 

• 

• 


• 

• 

30 

V. 

Poor Mercantile Jack 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 42 

VI. 

Refreshments for Travellers 

• 

• 


• 

• 

65 

VII. 

Travelling Abroad .... 

• 


• 


« 

. 65 

VIII. 

The Great Tasmania’s Cargo 

• 

• 


• 

• 

78 

IX. 

City of London Churches . 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 88 

X. 

Shy Neighborhoods 

• 

• 


♦ 

• 

99 

XI. 

Tramps 

• 


♦ 

• 

• 

. 110 

XII. 

Dullborough Town 

• 

• 


• 

• 

123 

XIII. 

Night Walks 



• 

• 

• 

. 135 

XIV. 

Chambers 

• 

• 


• 

• 

. 145 

XV. 

Nurse’s Stories 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 158 

XVI. 

Arcadian London .... 

• 

• 


• 

• 

170 

XVII. 

The Calais Night-Mail 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 180 

XVIII. 

Some Recollections of Mortality . 

• 

• 


• 

• 

. 189 

XIX. 

Birthday Celebrations 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 200 

XX. 

Bound for the Great Salt Lake 

• 

• 


• 

• 

211 

XXI. 

The City of the Absent . 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 225 

XXII. 

An Old Stage-Coaching House 

• 

• 


• 

• 

234 

XXIII. 

The Boiled Beef of New England . 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 243 

XXIV. 

Chatham Dock-Yard . 

• 

• 


• 

• 

253 

XXV. 

In the French-Flemish Country 

• 


• 

• 

t 

- 263 

XXVI. 

Medicine-Men of Civilization 

• 

• 


• 

• 

275 

XXVII. 

Titbull’s Almshouses 







XXVIII. 

The Italian Prisoner 

• 

• 


• 

• 

297 

XXIX. 

A Small Star in the East 

• 


• 

• 

• 

. 308 

XXX. 

Aboard Ship 






319 

XXXI. 

A Little Dinner in an Hour . 

. 



. 

. 

. 328 

XXXII. 

Mr. Barlow 






335 

XXXIII. 

On an Amateur Beat 







XXXIV. 

A Fly-Leaf in a Life 

. 


. 

. 

. 

348 

XXXV. 

A Plea for Total Abstinence . 

. 

. 


. 

. 

. 352 


vi 


CONTENTS 


ADDITIONAL CHRISTMAS STORIES. 

Somebody’s Luggage 359 

Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings 401 

Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy 437 

Doctor Marigold 469 

Two Ghost Stories 497 

The Boy at Mugby 523 

The Seven Poor Travellers 533 

The Holly-Tree 561 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, 


UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
The Tramp Caravan 

ADDITIONAL CHRISTMAS STORIES. 
Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings. “ iTere’s a mind, Ma’am ?/’ . 


Froniispitct* 


. 426 









INTEODUOTIOK 


BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 


Among the occasional contributions of Dickens to his weekly 
periodical called All the Year Round,” there are none more 
worthy of his talent than the series of sketches, under the title 
of “ The Uncommercial Traveller,” in which he combined the 
results of his general observation and reflection, with many 
Subtle revelations of personal experience which were truly auto- 
biographical. Among the numerous benevolent societies with 
which he was connected, he had a strong liking for one, that of 
the Commercial Travellers ; and he was specially interested in 
their schools. The treasurer of these, Mr. George Moore, he con- 
sidered a master spirit in the organization of beneficence, unit- 
ing great business capacity to a comprehensiveness of sympathy 
and intellect, which enabled him to deal with “ masses of men, 
however differing in creed and opinion, humanely and justly.” 
In a speech to the “ Commercial Travellers,” Dickens declared 
that “ integrity, enterprise, public spirit, and benevolence, had 
their synonym in Mr. Moore’s name ; but among the different 
persons who were desirous to aid the schools by their ad- 
dresses and influence, he could not fail to detect many laugha- 
ble instances of incongruity in the topics selected for speech- 
making and sermonizing. “I hope,” he writes to Forster, 
“ you have been as much amused as I am by the account of the 
Bishop of Carlisle at Mr. George Moore’s schools ? It strikes 
me as the funniest piece of weakness I ever saw, his addressing 
those unfortunate children concerning Colenso. I cannot get 


INTRODUCTION. 


X 

over the ridiculous image I have erected in my mind, of the 
shovel hat and apron holding forth, at that safe distance, to 
that safe audience. There is nothing so extravagant in Rabe- 
lais, or so satirically humorous in Swift or Voltaire.” The good 
Bishop may have had the experience of a gentleman of our 
acquaintance, who, after purchasing a Noah’s Ark for his little 
boy, was apprehensive that the child would turn out a Colenso? 
because, after the animals were emptied out of the toy ark, the 
child could, by no efforts of infantile ingenuity, get them all in 
again, and decided the thing could not be done. But the case 
exactly parallel in infelicity of selection is that recorded of an- 
other bishop, who was invited to preach before the armless, 
wooden-legged Chelsea Pensioners, and took for his topic, “ The 
Moral Dangers of Foreign Travel.” Perhaps, however, an 
assembly may sometimes feel more aggrieved by the aptness 
than the unfitness of a subject, as when Dean Swift preached 
before the Ayorshipful Society of Tailors, choosing for his text, 
“ A Remnant of Ye shall be Saved,” particularly emphasizing 
“ remnant ! ” 

Dickens selected the title of “ Uncommercial Traveller,” be- 
cause, he said he “ travelled for the great House of Human- 
interest Brothers,” and had “ rather a large connection in the 
fancy goods way.” He adds : “ Literally speaking, I am al- 
ways wandering, here and there, from my rooms in Coven t-gar- 
den, London : now about the city streets ; now about the coun- 
try by-roads : seeing many little things, and some great things, 
which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.” 
The papers were begun in “ All the Year Round,” on January 
28, 1860; and seventeen of them having been printed by Octo- 
ber 13, of the same year, they were, in December, published 
in a volume. In 1868, eleven fresh papers were added to the 
collection. Between December of that year and the autumn of 
1869, seven additional papers, — only collected after his death, 
— were published, under the title of “ New Uncommercial Sam- 
ples.” 

Most of these charming papers, if they had appeared in 


INTRODUCTION. 


XI 


Dickens’s novels, would have been ranked among his most felic- 
itous descriptions, whether they were considered as photographs 
of actual facts, or as illustrating the constant play of his humor, 
imagination, and human sympathies on the materials his ac- 
curate observation collected. Perhaps the most notable of 
these papers is that entitled “Night Walks.” It is autobio- 
graphic in the sense of telling us how the author, at one time 
suffering under an inability to sleep, overcame it by resolutely 
“ getting up, after lying down, and going out, and coming home 
tired after sunrise.” In the course of these nights, he tells us, 
he finished his education “ in a fair amateur experience of house- 
lessness ; ” and he gives examples of the various kinds of hu- 
man creatures he met in his wandeiings in the streets, from 
midnight to the rising of the sun. The most emphatic and ter- 
rible sentences in this paper are those in which he traces the 
progress of “Dry Rot in Men.” The advance which Dickens 
had made between the period when he wrote “ Sketches by 
Boz,” and the period in which he wrote the sketches contained 
in the “ Uncommercial Traveller,” is as marked, — if we may 
illustrate comparatively small things with things transcendently 
great, — as that indicated in the progress of the Shakespeare 
who wrote “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” and the Shake- 
speare who wrote “ Hamlet,” “ Othello,” “ Macbeth,” and “ Lear.” 
The least critical reader can detect how immensely Dickens had 
grown between 1836 and 1860. Without much loss of his de- 
lightful animal spirits, he had palpably grown in massiveness of 
manhood, as well as in sureness of observation, richness of im- 
agination, comprehensiveness of sympathy, and depth and range 
of thought. One feels, in contrasting these two periods of his 
life, that in twenty-four years he had become a greater man, as 
well as a greater writer. 




THE 


UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


I. 

HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS. 

Allow me to introduce myself, — first negatively. 

No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid 
loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and 
envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is ex- 
pressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made 
for me, no hotel advertisement is personally addressed to 
me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway 
wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public enter- 
tainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my 
opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my 
journeys I am not usually rated at a low figure in the 
bill ; when I come home from my journeys I never get 
any commission. I know nothing about prices, and 
shoiild have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle 
a man into ordering something he does n’t want. As a 
town traveller I am never to be seen driving a vehicle 
externally like a young and volatile piano-forte van, and 
internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are 
baking in layers. As a country traveller I am rarely to be 
found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleas- 
ure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite 
a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples. 

And yet — proceeding now to introduce myself posi- 
tively — I am both a town traveller and a country trav- 
eller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, 
I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, 
and have rather a large connection in the fancy-goods 
v/ay. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here 
and there from my rooms in Oovent Garden, London, — 
1 


2 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


now about the city streets, now about the country by- 
roads, — seeing many little things, and some great things, 
which, because they interest me7 I think may interest 
others. 

These are my brief credentials as the Uncommercial 
Traveller. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


3 


II. 


THE SHIPWRECK. 

Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under 
quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine 
had but another day to live, and truly its end was Peace 
on that sea-shore that morning. 

So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the 
.bright light -of the sun and under the transparent shad- 
ows of the clouds, that it was hard to imagine the bay 
otherwise, for years past or to come, than it was that 
very day. The Tug steamer lying a little off the shore, 
the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat along- 
side the Lighter, the regularly turning windlass aboard 
the Lighter, the methodical figures at work, all slowly 
and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of 
the sea, — all seemed as much a part of the nature of 
the place as the tide itself. The tide was on the flow, 
and had been for some two hours and a half ; there was 
a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my 
feet, as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it 
to keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had 
slipped a little from the land ; and as I stood upon the 
beach, and observed it dimpling the light swell that was 
coming in, I cast a stone over it. 

So orderly, so quiet, so regular, — the rising and fall- 
ing of the Tug steamer, the Lighter, and the boat, — the 
turning of the windlass, — the coming in of the tide, — 
that I myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything but 
new to the spot. Yet I had never seen it in my life a 
minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles to 
get at it. That very morning I had come bowling down, 
and strug’gling up, hill-country roads ; looking back at 
snowy summits ; meeting courteous peasants well to do, 
driving fat pigs and cattle to market 5 noting the neat 


4 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual quantity of 
clean white linen drying on the bushes ; having windy 
weather suggested by every cotter’s little rick, with its 
thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlap- 
ping compartments, like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I 
not given a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast Guardsman 
(kit and all) who was coming to his spell of duty there^ 
and had we not just now parted company? So it was ; 
but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, 
with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing 
was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight 
as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its 
freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard the 
Lighter, and the slight obstruction so very near my feet. 

0 reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at 
Home, and hearing the night-wind rumble in the chimney, 
that slight obstruction was the uppermost fragment of the 
Wreck of the Royal Charter,” Australian trader and 
passenger ship. Homeward bound, that struck here on the 
terrible morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke 
into three parts, went down with her treasure of at least 
five hundred human lives, and has never stirred since ! 

From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, 
stern foremost ; on which side, or on which, she passed 
the little Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be 
aground certain yards outside her, — these are rendered 
bootless questions by the darkness of that night and 
the darkness of death. Here she went down. 

Even as I stood on the beach, with the words, “ Here 
she went down ! ” in my ears, a diver in his grotesque 
dress dipped heavily over the side of the boat alongside 
the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by 
the water’s edge was a rough tent, made of fragments of 
wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered them- 
selves, and where they had kept Christmas day, with rum 
and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney. 
Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach were 
great spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted 
by the fury of the sea into the strangest forms. The tim- 
ber was already bleached and iron-rusted, and even these 
objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole 
scene wore of having been exactly the same for years and 
years. 


THE UNCOMMEKCIAL TRAVELLER. 


5 


Yet only two short months had gone since a man, liv- 
ing on the nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being 
blown out of bed at about daybreak by the wind that had 
begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a ladder 
with his nearest neighbor to construct some temporary 
device for keeping his house over his head, saw from the 
ladder’s elevation, as he looked down by chance towards 
the shore, some dark, troubled object close in with the 
land. And he and the other, descending to the beach, 
and finding the sea mercilessly beating over a great bro- 
ken ship, had clambered up the stony ways, like stair- 
cases without stairs, on which the wild village hangs in 
little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and had given 
the alarm. And so, over the hill-slopes, and past the wa- 
terfall, and down the gullies where the land drains off 
into the ocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen in- 
habiting that part of Wales had come running to the dis- 
mal sight, — 'their clergyman among them. And as they 
stood in the leaden morning, stricken with pity, leaning 
hard against the wind, their breath and vision often fail- 
ing as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever 
forming and dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool 
which was a part of the vessel’s cargo blew in with the 
salt foam and remained upon the land when the foam melt- 
ed, they saw the ship’s life-boat put off from one of the 
heaps of wreck ; and first, there were three men in her ; 
and in a moment she capsized, and there were but two ; 
and again, she was struck by a vast mass of water, and 
there was but one ; and again she was thrown bottom 
upward, and that one, with his arm struck through the 
broken planks, and waving as if for the help that could 
never reach him, went down into the deep. 

It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, 
while I stood on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome 
face as it turned to the spot where the boat had been. 
The divers were down then, and busy. They were ‘‘ lift- 
ing” to-day the gold found yesterday, — some five-and- 
twenty thousand pounds. Of three hundred and fifty 
thousand pounds’ worth of gold, three hundred thousand 
pounds’ worth, in round numbers, was at that time re- 
covered. The great bulk of the remainder was surely 
and steadily coming up. Some loss of sovereigns there 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


would be, of course ; indeed, at first, sovereigns Iiad 
drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and wide 
over the beach, like sea-shells ; but most other golden 
treasure would be found. As it was brought up, it went 
aboard the Tug steamer, where good account was taken 
of it. So tremendous had the force of the sea been when 
it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of 
gold deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron- 
work ; in which also, several loose sovereigns that the 
ingot had swept in before it had been found, as firmly 
embedded as though the iron had been liquid when they 
were forced there. It had been remarked of such bodies 
come ashore, too, as had been seen by scientific men, 
that they had been stunned to death, and not sufibcated. 
Observation both of the internal change that had been 
wrought in them and of their external expression, showed 
death to have been thus merciful and easy. The report 
was brought, while I was holding such discourse on the 
beach, that no more bodies had come ashore since last 
night. It began to be very doubtful whether many more 
would be thrown up, until the northeast winds of the 
early spring set in. Moreover, a great number of the 
passengers, and particularly the second-class women pas- 
sengers, were known to have been in the middle of the 
ship when she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck 
would have fallen upon them after yawning open, and 
would keep them down. A diver made known, even then, 
that he had come upon the body of a man, and had 
sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight ; 
but that, finding he could not do so without mutilating 
the remains, he had left it where it was. 

It was the kind and wholesome face I have made men- 
tion of as being then beside me that I had purposed to 
myself to see when I left home for Wales. I had heard 
of that clergyman, as having buried many scores of the 
shipwrecked people ; of his having opened his house and 
heart to their agonized friends ; of his having used a most 
sweet and patient diligence for weeks and weeks in the 
performance of the forlornest offices that Man can render 
to his kind ; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly 
devoted himself to the dead, and to those who were sor- 
rowing for the dead. I had said to myself, “In the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


7 


Christmas season of the year, I should like to see that 
man ! ’’ And he had swung the gate of his little garden, 
in coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago. 

So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of afiectation as true 
practical Christianity ever is 1 I read more of the New 
Testament in the fresh, frank face going up the village 
beside me, in five minutes, than I have read in anathema- 
tizing discourses (albeit put to press with enormous flour- 
ishing of trumpets) in all my life. I heard more of the 
Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say 
about its owner, than in all the would-be celestial pairs 
of bellows that have ever blown conceit at me. 

We climbed towards the little church at a cheery pace 
among the loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse 
grass, the outlying water, and other obstructions from 
which frost and snow had lately thawed. It was a mis- 
take (my friend was glad to tell me, on the way) to sup- 
pose that the peasantry had shown any superstitious 
avoidance of the drowned ; on the whole, they had done 
very well, and had assisted readily. Ten shillings had 
been paid for the bringing of each body up to the church ; 
but the way was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it 
was wrapped in a sheet) were necessary, and three or 
four men, and, all things considered, it was not a great 
price. The people were none the richer for the wreck, 
for it was the season of the herring-shoal, — and who 
could cast nets for fish, and find dead men and women in 
the draught ? 

He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the 
churchyard gate, and opened the church door ; and we 
went in. 

It is a little church of great antiquity ; there is reason 
to believe that some church has occupied the spot these 
thousand years or more. The pulpit was gone, and other 
things usually belonging to the church were gone, owing 
to its living congregation having deserted it for the 
neighboring school-room, and yielded it up to the dead. 
The very Commandments had been shouldered out of their 
places, in the bringing in of the dead ; the black wooden 
tables on which they were painted were askew ; and on 
the stone pavement below them, and on the stone pave- 
ment all over the church, were the marks and stains 


8 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


where the drowned had been laid down The eye, with 
little or no aid from the imagination, could yet see how 
the bodies had been turned, and where the head had been, 
and where the feet. Some faded traces of the wreck of 
the Australian ship may be discernible on the stone pave- 
ment of this little church hundreds of years hence, when 
the digging for gold in Australia shall have long and 
long ceased out of the land. 

Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one 
time, awaiting burial. Here, with weeping and wailing 
in every room of his house, my companion worked alone 
for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that could not see 
him, and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently ex- 
amining the tattered clothing, cutting ofi* buttons, hair, 
marks from linen, anything that might lead to subsequent 
identification, studying faces, looking for a scar, a bent 
finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters sent to him with 
the ruin about him. '' My dearest brother had bright 
gray eyes and a pleasant smile, one sister wrote. 0 
poor sister ! well for you to be far from here, and keep 
that as your last remembrance of him I 

The ladies of the clergyman’s family, his wife and two 
sisters-in-law, came in among the bodies often. It grew 
to be the business of their lives to do so. Any new arri- 
val of a bereaved woman would stimulate their pity to 
compare the description brought with the dread realities. 
Sometimes they would go back, able to say, I have 
found him,” or, '' I think she lies there.” Perhaps the 
mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the 
church, would be led in blindfold. Conducted to the spot 
with many compassionate words, and encouraged to look, 
she would say, with a piercing cry, This is my boy I ” 
and drop insensible on the insensible figure. 

He soon observed that in some cases of women the 
identification of persons, though complete, was quite at 
variance with the marks upon the linen ; this led him to 
notice that even the marks upon the linen were sometimes 
inconsistent with one another ; and thus he came to un- 
derstand that they had dressed in great haste and agita- 
tion, and that their clothes had become mixed together. 
The identification of men by their dress was rendered ex- 
tremely diflScult, in consequence of a large proportion of 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


9 


them being dressed alike, — in clothes of one kind, that is 
to say, supplied by slopsellers and outfitters, and not 
made by single garments, but by hundreds. Many of the 
men were bringing over parrots, and had receipts upon 
them for the price of the birds ; others had bills of ex- 
change in their pockets or in belts. Some of these docu- 
ments, carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less 
fresh in appearance that day than the present page will 
be, under ordinary circumstances, after having been opened 
three or four times. 

In that lonely place it had not been easy to obtain even 
such common comfnodities in towns as ordinary disin- 
fectants. Pitch had been burnt in the church, as the 
readiest thing at hand ; and the frying-pan in which it had 
bubbled over a brazier of coal was still there, with its 
ashes. Hard by the Communion Table were some boots 
that had been taken off the drowned, and preserved, — a 
gold-digger’s boot, cut down the leg for its removal, a 
trodden-down man’s ankle-boot with a buff cloth top, — 
and others, — soaked and sandy, weedy and salt. 

From the church we passed out into the churchyard. 
Here there lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five 
bodies that had come ashore from the wreck. He had 
buried them, when not identified, in graves containing 
four each. He had numbered each body in a register de- 
scribing it, and had placed a corresponding number on 
each coffin, and over each grave. Identified bodies he 
had buried singly, in private graves, in another part of 
the churchyard. Several bodies had been exhumed from 
the graves of four, as relatives had come from a distance, 
and seen his register ; and, when recognized, these have 
been reburied in private graves, so that the mourners 
might erect separate headstones over the remains. In all 
such cases he had performed the funeral service a second 
time, and the ladies of his house had attended. There 
had been no offence in the poor ashes when they were 
brought again to the light of day ; the beneficent earth 
had already absorbed it. The drowned were buried in 
their clothes. To supply the great sudden demand for 
coffins, he had got all the neighboring people handy at 
tools to work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise. The 
coffins were neatly formed ; — I had seen two, waiting for 


10 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


occupants, under the lee of the ruined walls of a stone 
hut on the beach, within call of the tent where the 
Christinas Feast was held. Similarly, one of the graves 
for four was lying open and ready here in the cliurch- 
yard. So much of the scanty space was already devoted 
to the wrecked people, that the villagers had begun to 
express uneasy doubts whether they themselves could 
lie in their own ground, with their forefathers and de- 
scendants, by and by. The churchyard being but a step 
from the clergyman’s dwelling-house, we crossed to the 
latter. The white surplice was hanging up near the 
door, ready to be put on at any time for a funeral service. 

The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minis- 
ter was as consolatory as the circumstances out of which 
it shone were sad. I never have seen anything more 
delightfully genuine than the calm dismissal by himself 
and his household of all they had undergone, as a simple 
duty that was quietly done and ended. In speaking of 
it, they spoke of it with great compassion for the be- 
reaved ; but laid no stress upon their own hard share in 
those weary weeks, except as it had attached many peo- 
ple to them as friends, and elicited many touching ex- 
pressions of gratitude. This clergyman’s brother, — him- 
self the clergyman of two adjoining parishes, who had 
buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard, 
and who had done to them all that his brother had done 
as to the larger number, — must be understood as in- 
cluded in the family. He was there with his neatly ar- 
ranged papers, and made no more account of his trouble 
than anybody else did. Down to yesterday’s post out- 
ward, my clergyman alone had written one thousand and 
seventy-five letters to relatives and friends of the lost 
people. In the absence of self-assertion, it Avas only 
through my now and then delicately putting a question 
as the occasion arose, that I became informed of these 
things. It was only when I had remarked again and again, 
in the church, on the awful nature of the scene of death 
he had been required so closely to familiarize himself Avith 
for the soothing of the living, that he had casually said, 
without the least abatement of his cheerfulness, “ indeed, 
it had rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more 
than a little coffee now and then, and a piece of bread.’’ 


THE UlSCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


11 


In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in 
this serene avoidance of the least attempt to improve ’’ 
an occasion which might be supposed to have sunk of its 
own weight into my heart, I seemed to have happily 
come, in a few steps, from the churchyard with its open 
grave, which was the type of Death, to the Christian 
dwelling side by side with it, which was the type of Res- 
urrection. I never shall think of the former without the 
latter. The two will always rest side by side in my mem- 
ory. If 1 had lost any one dear to me in this unfortunate 
ship, — if I had made a voyage from Australia to look at 
the grave in the churchyard, — I should go away, thank- 
ful to God that that house was so close to it, and that its 
shadow by day and its domestic lights by night fell upon 
the earth in which its master had so tenderly laid m3’' dear 
one’s head. 

The references that naturally arose out of our conversa- 
tion to the descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, 
and to the gratitude of relations and friends, made me 
very anxious to see some of those letters. I was present- 
ly seated before a shipwreck of papers, all bordered with 
black, and from them I made the following few extracts. 

A mother writes : — 

Reverend Sir : — Amongst the many who perished on 
your shore was numbered my beloved son. I was only 
just recovering from a severe illness, and this fearful af- 
fliction has caused a relapse, so that I am unable at pres- 
ent to go to identify the remains of the loved and lost. 
My darling son would have been sixteen on Christmas day 
next. He was a most amiable and obedient child, early 
taught the way of salvation. We fondly hoped that as a 
British seaman he might be an ornament to his profession, 
but “ it is well ” ; I feel assured my dear boy is now with 
the redeemed. 0, he did not wish to go this last voy- 
age ! On the fifteenth of October I received a letter from 
him from Melbourne, date August twelfth ; he wrote in 
high spirits, and in conclusion he says : “ Pray for a fair 
breeze, dear mamma, and I ’ll not forget to whistle for it I 
and, God permitting, I shall see you and all my little pets 
again. Good by, dear mother, — good by, dearest par- 
ents. Good by, dear brother.” 0, it was indeed an 


12 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


eternal farewell. I do not apologize for thus writing you, 
for 0; my heart is so very sorrowful I 

A husband writes : — 

My dear kind Sir : — Will you kindly inform me wheth- 
er there are any initials upon the ring and guard you have 
in possession, found, as the '' Standard says, last Tues- 
day ? Believe me, my dear sir, when I say that I cannot 
express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for your 
kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day. Will 
you tell me what I can do for you, and will you write me 
a consoling letter to prevent my mind from going astray ? 

A widow writes : — 

Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought 
it best that my dear husband should be buried where he 
lies, and, much as I should have liked to have had it oth- 
erwise, I must submit. I feel, from all I have heard of 
you, that you will see it done decently and in order. 
Little does it signify to us, when the soul has departed, 
where this poor body lies ; but we who are left behind 
would do all we can to show how we loved them. This 
is denied me ; but it is God’s hand that affiicts us, and I 
try to submit. Some day I may be able to visit the spot, 
and see where he lies, and erect a simple stone to his 
memory. 0, it will be long, long before I forget that 
dreadful night I Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or 
any shop in Bangor, to which I could send for a small 
picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo church, a spot now sacred 
to me ? 

Another widow writes : — 

I have received your letter this morning, and do thank 
you most kindly for the interest you have taken about my 
dear husband, as well as for the sentiments yours contains, 
evincing the spirit of a Christian who can sympathize 
with those who, like myself, are broken down with grief. 

May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection 
with you, in this great trial ! Time may roll on and bear 
all its sons away, but your name as a disinterested person 
will stand in history, and, as successive years pass, many 
a widow will think of your noble conduct, and the tears 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


13 


of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a 
thankful heart, when other things are forgotten forever. 

A father writes : — 

I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my 
gratitude to you for your kindness to my son Kichard 
upon the melancholy occasion of his visit to his dear 
brother’s body, and also for your ready attention in pro- 
nouncing our beautiful burial-service over my poor unfor- 
tunate son’s remains. God grant that your prayers over 
him may reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be 
received (through Christ’s intercession) into heaven ! 

His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heart- 
felt thanks. 

Those who were received at the clergyman’s house 
write thus after leaving it : — 

Dear and never-to-be-forgotten Friends : — I arrived 
here yesterday morning without accident, and am about 
to proceed to my home by railway. 

I am overpowered when I think of you and your hos* 
pitable home. No words could speak language suited to 
my heart. I refrain. God reward you with the same 
measure you have meted with ! 

I enumerate no names, but embrace you all. 

My beloved Friends : — This is the first day that I have 
been able to leave my bedroom since I returned, which 
will explain the reason of my not writing sooner. 

If I could only have had my last melancholy hope real* 
ized in recovering the body of my beloved and lamented 
son, I should have returned home somewhat comforted, 
and I think I could then have been comparatively re- 
signed. 

I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as 
cue without hope. 

The only consolation to my distressed mind is in hav- 
ing been so feelingly allowed by you to leave the matter 
in your hands, by whom I well know that everything will 
be done that can be, according to arrangements made be- 
fore I left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to 
the identification of my dear son, and also his interment. 


14 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


I feel most anxious to hear whether anything* fresh has 
transpired since I left you ; will you add another to the 
many deep obligations I am under to you by writing to 
me ? And, should the body of my dear and unfortunate 
son be identified, let me hear from you immediately, and 
I will come again. 

Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you 
all for your benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sym- 
pathy. 

My deaely beloved Fkiends : — I arrived in safety at 
my house yesterday, and a night^s rest has restored and 
tranquillized me. I must again repeat, that language has 
no words by which I can express my sense of obligation 
to you. You are enshrined in my heart of hearts. 

I have seen him I and can now realize my misfortune 
more than I have hitherto been able to do. 0, the bitter- 
ness of the cup I drink ! But I bow submissive. God 
must have done right. I do not want to feel less, but to 
acquiesce more simply. 

There were some Jewish passengers on board the ^'Roy- 
al Charter, and the gratitude of the Jewish people is 
feelingly expressed in the following letter, bearing date 
from ‘‘ the office of the Chief Rabbi ’’ i — 

Reverend Sir : — I cannot refrain from expressing to 
you my heartfelt thanks on behalf of those of my flock 
whose relatives have unfortunately been among those who 
perished at the late wreck? of the '' Royal Charter.’^ You 
have indeed, like Boaz, ‘^not left off your kindness to the 
living and the dead.^^ 

You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by 
receiving them hospitably at your house, and energeti- 
cally assisting them in their mournful duty, but also to- 
wards the dead by exerting yourself to have our co-reli- 
gionists buried in our ground, and according to our rites. 
May our heavenly Father reward you for your acts of hu- 
manity and true philanthropy I 

The '' Old Hebrew Congregation of Liverpool ’’ thus ex- 
press themselves through their secretary : — 

Reverend Sir : — The wardens of this congregation have 
learned with great pleasure that, in addition to those in- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


15 


defatigable exertions, at the scene of the late disaster to 
the Koyal Charter,” which have received universal rec- 
ognition, you have very benevolently employed your val- 
uable efforts to assist such members of our faith as have 
sought the bodies of lost friends to give them burial in 
our consecrated grounds, with the observances and rites 
proscribed by the ordinances of our religion. 

The wardens desire me to take the earliest available op- 
portunity to ofier to you, on behalf of our community, tae 
expression of their warm acknowledgments and grateful 
thanks, and their sincere wishes for your continued wel- 
fare and prosperity. 

A J ewish gentleman writes : — . 

Reverend and dear Sir : — I take the opportunity of 
thanking you right earnestly for the promptness you dis- 
played in answering my note with full particulars concern- 
ing my much-lamented brother, and I also herein beg to 
express my sincere regard for the willingness you dis- 
played, and for the facility you afforded for getting the 
remains of my poor brother exhumed. It has been to us 
a most sorrowful and painful event, but when we meet 
with such friends as yourself, it in a measure, somehow or 
other, abates that mental anguish, and makes the suffer 
ing so much easier to be borne. Considering the circum- 
stances connected with my poor brother's fate, it does, 
indeed, appear a hard one. He had been away in all sev- 
en years ; he returned four years ago to see his family. 
He was then engaged to a very amiable young lady. He 
had been very successful abroad, and was now returning 
to fulfil his sacred vow ; he brought all his property with 
him in gold uninsured. We heard from him when the ship 
stopped at Queenstown, when he was in the highest of 
hope, and in a few short hours afterwards all was washed 
away. 

Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quo- 
tation here, were the numerous references to those minia- 
tures of women worn round the necks of rough men (and 
found there after death), those locks of hair, those scraps 
of letters, those many, many slight memorials of hidden 
tenderness. One man cast up by the sea bore about him, 


IG THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 

printed on a perforated lace card, the following singular 
(and unavailing) charm : — 

A BLESSING. 

May the blessing of God await thee. May the sun of 
glory shine around thy bed ; and may the gates of plenty, 
honor, and happiness be ever open to thee. May no sor- 
row distress thy days ; may no grief disturb thy nights. 
May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the pleasures 
of imagination attend thy dreams ; and when length of 
years makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of 
death gently closes around thy last sleep of human exist- 
ence, may the Angel of God attend thy bed, and take care 
that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive one rude 
blast to hasten on its ‘extinction. 

A sailor had these devices on his right arm. Our Sav- 
iour on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the ves- 
ture stained red ; on the lower part of the arm, a man and 
woman ; on one side of the Cross, the appearance of a 
half-moon, with a face ; on the other side, the sun ; on the 
top of the Cross, the letters I. H. S. ; on the left arm, a 
man and woman dancing, with an efibrt to delineate the 
female’s dress ; under which, initials.” Another seaman 
‘‘had, on the lower part of the right arm, the device of a 
sailor and a female ; the man holding the Union Jack with 
a streamer, the folds of which waved over her head, and 
the end of it was held in her hand. On the upper part 
of the ai:m, a device of Our Lord on the Cross, with stars 
surrounding the head of the Cross, and one large star on 
the side in Indian ink. On the left arm, a flag, a true 
lover’s knot, a face, and initials.” This tattooing was 
found still plain, below the discolored outer surface of a 
mutilated arm, when such surface was carefully scraped 
away with a knife. It is not improbable that the per- 
petuation of this marking custom among seamen may be 
referred back to their desire to be identified, if drowned 
and flung ashore. 

It was some time before I could sever myself from the 
many interesting papers on the table ; and then I broke 
bread and drank wine with the kind family before I left 
them. As I brought the Coast Guard down, so I took 
the Postman back, with his leathern wallet, walking- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


17 


stick, bugle, and terrier dog. Many a heart-broken let- 
ter had he brought to the Rectory House within two 
months ; many a benignantly painstaking answer had he 
carried back. 

As I rode along I thought of the many people, in- 
habitants of this mother-country, who would make pil- 
grimages to the little churchyard in the years to come ; I 
thought of the many people in Australia who would have 
an interest in such a shipwreck, and would find their way 
here when they visit the Old World; I thought of the 
writers of all the wreck of letters I had left upon the ta- 
ble ; and I resolved to place this little record where it 
stands. Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles, 
and the like, will do a great deal for Religion, I dare 
say, and Heaven send they may I but I doubt if they will 
ever do their Master’s service half so well, in all the time 
they last, as the Heavens have seen it done in this bleak 
spot upon the rugged coast of Wales. 

Had I lost the friend of my life in the wreck of the 

Royal Charter ” ; had I lost my betrothed, the more 
than friend of my life ; had I lost my maiden daughter, 
had I lost my hopeful boy, had I lost my little child, — 
I would kiss the hands that worked so busily and gently 
in the church, and say, “ None better could have touched 
the form, though it had lain at home.” I could be sure 
of it ; I could be thankful for it ; I could be content to 
leave the grave near the house the good family pass in 
and out of every day, undisturbed, in the little churchyard 
where so many are so strangely brought together. 

Without the name of the clergyman to whom — I hope 
not without carrying comfort to some heart at some time 
— I have referred, my reference would be as nothing. 
He is the Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, 
near Moelfra, Anglesey. His brother is the Reverend 
Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos Alligwy. 


2 


18 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


III. 


WAPPING WORKHOUSE. 

My day^s no-business beckoning me to the East End of 
London, I had turned my face to that point of the met- 
ropolitan compass on leaving Covent Garden, and had got 
past the India House, thinking in my idle manner of Tip- 
poo Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little 
wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on 
one leg of his knee-shorts for old acquaintance^ sake, and 
had got past Aldgate Pump, and had got past the Sara- 
cen^s Head (with an ignominious rash of posting-bills 
disfiguring his swarthy countenance), and had strolled up 
the empty yard of his ancient neighbor the Black or Blue 
Boar, or Bull, who departed this life I don^t know when, 
and whose coaches are all gone I don’t know where ; and 
I had come out again into the age of railways, and I had 
got past Whitechapel Church, and was — rather inappro- 
priately for an Uncommercial Traveller — in the Commer- 
cial Road. Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant mud 
of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles 
of building belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts 
and vanes in small back gardens in back streets, the 
neighboring canals and docks, the India-vans lumbering 
along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers’ shops 
where hard-up Mates had pawned so inanj'- sextants and 
quadrants that I should have bought a few cheap if I had 
the least notion how to use them, I at last began to file 
oft’ to the right towards Wapping. 

Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, 
or that I was going to look at the locality because I be- 
lieve (for I don’t) in the constancy of \he young woman 
who told her sea-going lover, to such a beautiful old tune, 
that she had ever continued the same, since she gave him 
the ’baccer-box marked with his name. I am afraid he 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


19 


nsually got the worst of those transactions, and was fright- 
fully taken in. No, I was going to Wapping, because an 
Eastern police magistrate had said, through the morning 
papers, that there was no classification at the Wapping 
workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a 
shame, and divers other hard names, and because I wished 
to see how the fact really stood. For that Eastern police 
magistrates are not always the wisest men of the East may 
be inferred from their course of procedure respecting the 
fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. George’s 
in that quarter ; which is usually to discuss the matter at 
issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplexi- 
ty, with all parties concerned and unconcerned, and, for 
a final expedient, to consult the complainant as to what 
he thinks ought to be done with the defendant, and take 
the defendant’s opinion as to what he would recommend 
to be done with himself. 

Long before I reached Wapping I gave myself up as 
having lost my way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow 
streets in a Turkish frame of mind, relied on predestina- 
tion to bring me somehow or other to the place I wanted, 
if I were ever to get there. When I had ceased for an 
hour or so to take any trouble about the matter, I found 
myself on a swing-bridge, looking down at some dark 
locks in some dirty water. Over against me stood a crea- 
ture remotely in the likeness of a young man, with a pufied 
sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, 
who may have been the youngest son of his filthy old fa- 
ther, Thames, or the drowned man about whom there was 
a placard on the granite post, like a large thimble, that 
stood between us. 

I asked this apparition what it called the place. Unto 
which it replied, with a ghastly grin, and a sound like gur- 
gling water in its throat : — 

Mr. Baker’s trap.” 

As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such 
occasions to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the 
conversation, I deeply considered the meaning of this 
speech, while I eyed the apparition, — then engaged in 
hugging and sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of 
the locks. Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker 
was the acting coroner of that neighborhood. 


20 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


A common place for suicide/^ said I, looking down at 
the locks. 

Sue ? ” returned the ghost, with a stare. Yes ! 
And Poll. Likewise Emly. And Nancy. And Jane ; 
he sucked the iron between each name ; and all the bile- 
ing. Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and 
headers down here, they doos. Always a headerin^ down 
here, they is. Like one o^clock.^^ 

And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose ? 

Ah ! said the apparition. They ain’t paitickler. 
Two ’ull do for them. Three. All times o’ night. O’ny 
mind you I ” Here the apparition rested his profile on the 
bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic manner. '' There must be 
somebody cornin’. They don’t go a headerin’ down here 
wen there ain’t no Bobby nor gen’ral Cove fur to hear the 
splash.” 

According' to my interpretation of these words, I was 
myself a General Cove, or member of the miscellaneous 
public. In which modest character I remarked : — 

“ They are often taken out, are they, and restored ? ” 

“ I dunno about restored,” said the apparition, who, 
for some occult reason, very much objected to that 
word; ^‘they’re carried into the werkiss, and put into 
a ’ot bath, and brought round. But 1 dunno about re- 
stored,” said the apparition; ^‘blow that!’’ — and van- 
ished. ^ 

As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was 
not sorry to find myself alone, especially as the ‘'wer- 
kiss ” it had indicated with a twist of its matted head was 
close at hand. So I left Mr. Baker’s terrible trap (baited 
with a scum that was like the soapy rinsing of sooty 
chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse gale, 
where I was wholly unexpected and quite unknown, 

A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch 
of keys in her hand, responded to my request to see the 
House. I began to doubt whether the police magistrate 
was quite right in his facts when I noticed her quick, ac- 
tive little figure and her intelligent eyes. 

The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the 
worst first. He was welcome to see everything. Such 
as it was, there it all was. 

This was the only preparation for our entering “the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


21 


Foal wards. They were in an old building sq[ueezed 
away in a corner of a paved yard, quite detached from 
the more modern and spacious main body of the work- 
house. They were in a building most monstrously behind 
the time, — a mere series of garrets or lofts, with every 
inconvenient and objectionable circumstance in their con- 
struction, and only accessible by steep and narrow stair- 
cases, infamously ill adapted for the passage up stairs of 
the sick, or down stairs of the dead. 

Abed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there 
(for a change, as I understood it) on the floor, were wo- 
men in every stage of distress and disease. None but 
those who have attentively observed such scenes can con- 
ceive the extraordinary variety of expression still latent 
under the general monotony and uniformity of color, atti- 
tude, and condition. The form a little coiled up and 
turned away, as though it had turned its back on this 
world forever ; the uninterested face, at once lead-colored 
and yellow, looking passively upward from the pillow ; 
the haggard mouth a little dropped ; the hand outside the 
coverlet, so dull and indifferent, so light, and ^mt so 
heavy, — these were on every pallet ; but when I stopped 
beside a bed, and said ever so slight a word to the figure 
lying there, the ghost of the old character came into the 
face, and made the Foul ward as various as the fair world. 
No one appeared to care to live, but no one complained; 
all who could speak said that as much was done for them 
as could be done there, — that the attendance was kind 
and patient, — that their suffering was very heavy, but 
they had nothing to ask for. The wretched rooms were 
as clean and sweet as it is possible for such rooms to be ; 
they would become a pest-house in a single, week, if they 
were ill kept. 

I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous 
staircase, into a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic 
and imbecile. There was at least Light in it, whereas the 
windows in the former wards had been like sides of 
school-boys’ birdcages. There was a strong grating oyer 
the fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either side 
of the hearth, separated by the breadth of this gratirig, 
were two old ladies in a condition of feeble dignity which 
was surely the very last and lowest reduction of self-corn- 


22 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


placency to be found in this wonderful humanity of ours. 
They were evidently jealous of each other, and passed 
their whole time (as some people do, whose fires are not 
grated) in mentally disparaging each other, and contempt- 
uously watching their neighbors. One of these parodies 
on provincial gentlewomen was extremely talkative, and 
expressed a strong desire to attend the service on Sun- 
days, from which she represented herself to have derived 
the greatest interest and consolation when allowed that 
privilege. She gossiped so well, and looked altogether 
so cheery and harmless, that I began to think this a case 
for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that, on the last 
occasion of her attending chapel, she had secreted a small 
stick, and had caused some confusion in the responses by 
suddenly producing it and belaboring the congregation. 

So these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the 
grating, — otherwise they would fly at one another's 
caps, — sat all day long, suspecting one another, and 
contemplating a world of fits. For everybody else in the 
room had fits, except the wards-woman, — an elderly, 
able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air 
of repressing and saving her strength, as she stood with 
her hands folded before her, and her eyes slowly rolling, 
biding her time for catching or holding somebody. This 
civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify a re- 
duced member of my honorable friend Mrs. Gamp’s family) 
said, “ They has ’em continiwal, sir. They drops with- 
out no more notice than if they was coach-horses dropped 
from the moon, sir. And when one drops, another drops, 
and sometimes there ’ll be as many as four or five on ’em 
at once, dear me, a rollin’ and a tearin’, bless you I — 
this young woman, now, has ’em dreadful bad.” 

She turned up this young woman’s face with her hand 
as she said it. This young woman was seated on the 
floor, pondering, in the foreground of the afflicted. There 
was nothing repellant, either in her face or head. Many 
apparently worse varieties of epilepsy and hysteria were 
about her, but she was said to be the worst there. When 
I had spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face 
turned up, pondering, and a gleam of the midday sun 
shone in upon her. 

— Whether this young woman and the rest of these so 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


23 


sorely troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their con- 
fused, dull way, ever get mental glimpses, among the 
motes in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy 
things ? Whether this young woman, brooding like this 
in the summer season, ever thinks that somewhere there 
are trees and flowers, even mountains and the great sea ? 
Whetlier, not to go so far, this young woman ever has 
any dim revelation of that young woman, — that young 
woman who is not here and never will come here, — who 
is courted, and caressed, and loved, and has a husband, 
and bears children, and lives in a home, and who never 
knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing coming 
upon her ? And whether this young woman, God help 
her ! gives herself up then, and drops like a coach-horse 
from the moon ? 

I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, 
penetrating into so hopeless a place, made a sound that 
was pleasant or painful to me. It was something to be 
reminded that the weary world was not all aweary, and 
was ever renewing itself ; but this young woman was a 
child not long ago, and a child not long hence might be 
such as she. Howbeit, the active step and eye of the 
vigilant matron conducted me past the two provincial 
gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by the children), 
and into the adjacent nursery. 

There were many babies here, and more than one hand- 
some young mother. There were ugly young mothers 
also, and sullen young mothers, and callous young moth- 
ers. But the babies had not appropriated to themselves 
any bad expression yet, and might have been, for any- 
thing that appeared to the contrary in their soft faces. 
Princes Imperial and Princesses Royal. I had the pleas- 
ure of giving a poetical commission to the baker’s man 
to make a cake with all despatch and toss it into the 
oven for one red-headed young pauper and myself, and 
felt much the better for it. Without that refreshment I 
doubt if I should have been in a condition for ‘'the Re- 
fractories,^^ towards whom my quick little matron — for 
whose adaptation to her office I had by this time con- 
ceived a genuine respect — drew me next, and marshalled 
mo the way that I was going. 

The Refractories were picking oakum in a small room 


24 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


giving on a yard. They sat in line on a form, with their 
backs to a window ; before them, a table and their work. 
The oldest Refractory was, say twenty ; youngest Refrac- 
tory, say sixteen. I have never yet ascertained, in the 
course of my uncommercial travels, why a Refractory habit 
should affect the tonsils and uvula ; but I have always 
observed that Refractories of both sexes and every grade, 
between a Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one 
voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased as- 
cendency. 

“ Five pound, indeed I I hainH a going fur to pick five 
pound,’’ said the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time 
to herself with her head and chin. More than enough 
to pick what we picks now, in sich a place as this, and 
on wot we gets here ! ” 

(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation 
that the amount of work was likely to be increased. It 
certainly was not heavy then, for one Refractory had al- 
ready done her day’s task, — it was barely two o’clock, 
— and was sitting behind it, with a head exactly match- 
ing it.) 

A pretty Ouse this is, matron, — ain’t it?” said Re- 
fractory Two, '‘where a pleeseman ’s called in if a gal 
says a word ! ” 

“ And wen you ’re sent to prison for nothink or less ! ” 
said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the 
matron’s hair. “ But any place is better than this ; 
that’s one thing, and be thankful ! ” 

A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded 
arms, — who originated nothing, but who was in com- 
mand of the skirmishers outside the conversation. 

“ If any place is better than this,” said my brisk guide, 
in the calmest manner, “it is a pity you left a good 
place when you had one.” 

“Ho, no, I didn’t, matron,” returned the Chief, with 
another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look at 
the enemy’s forehead. “ Don’t say that, matron, cos it’s 
lies I ” 

Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skir- 
mished, and retired. 

“ And 1 warn’t a going,” exclaimed Refractory Two, 
“though I was in one place for as long as four year, — -i 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


25 


warn^t a going fur to stop in a place that warnH fit for 
me; — there I And where the family warn’t ^spectable 
characters, — there I And where I, fortunately or hun- 
fort’nately, found that the people warn^t what they pre- 
tended to make theirselves out to be, — there I And 
where it was n^t their faults, by chalks, if I warn^t made 
bad and ruinated — Hah ! 

During this speech Oakum Head had again made a di- 
version with the skirmishers, and had again withdrawn. 

The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that 
he supposed Chief Refractory and Number One to be the 
two young women who had been taken before the magis- 
trate. 

Yes ! said the Chief, “ we har ! and the wonder is 
that a pleeseman ainH ^ad in now, and we took off agen. 
You can^t open your lips here without a pleeseman.’^ 

Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skir- 
mishers followed suit. 

“ I ^m sure I ^d be thankful,’^ protested the Chief, look- 
ing sideways at the Uncommercial, if I could be got 
into a place, or got abroad. I ^m sick and tired of this 
precious Ouse, I am, with reason. 

So would be and so was Number Two. So would be 
and so was Oakum Head. So would be and so were 
Skirmishers. 

The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he 
hardly thought it probable that any lady or gentleman in 
want of a likely young domestic of retiring manners 
would be tempted into the engagement of either of the 
two leading Refractories, on her own presentation of her- 
self as per sample. 

It ain^t no good being nothink else here,^^ said the 
Chief. 

The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying. 

0 no, it ain^t,^^ said the Chief. 

‘‘ Not a bit of good,^^ said Number Two. 

And I ^m sure I ^d be very thankful to be got into a 
place, or got abroad, said the Chief. 

And so should said Number Two, — truly thank- 
ful, I should.'' 

Oakum Head then rose, and announced, as an entirely 
new idea, the mention of which profound novelty might 


26 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


be naturally expected to startle her unprepared hearers, 
that she would be very thankful to be got into a place, or 
got abroad. And, as if she had then said, Chorus, la- 
dies I all the Skirmishers struck up to the same purpose. 
We left them, thereupon, and began a long walk among 
the women who were simply old and infirm ; but when- 
ever, in the course of this same walk, I looked out of any 
high window that commanded the yard, I saw Oakum 
Head and all the other Eefractories looking out at their 
low window for me, and never failing to catch me, the 
moment I showed my head. 

In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables 
of a golden time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old 
age. In ten minutes all the lights of womankind seemed 
to have been blown out, and nothing in that way to be 
left this vault to brag of but the flickering and expiring 
snufis. 

And what was very curious was that these dim old wo- 
men had one company notion which was the fashion of the 
place. Every old woman who became aware of a visitor, 
and was not in bed, hobbled over a form into her accus- 
tomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old women 
confronting another line of dim old women across a nar- 
row table. There was no obligation whatever upon them 
to range themselves in this way ; it was their manner of 

receiving. As a rule, they made no attempt to talk 
to one another, or to look at the visitor, or to look at 
anything, but sat silently working their mouths, like a 
sort of poor old Cows. In some of these wards it was 
good to see a few green plants ; in others, an isolated 
Refractory acting as nurse, who did well enough in that 
capacity, when separated from her compeers. Every one 
of these wards, day-room, night-room, or both combined, 
was scrupulously clean and fresh. I have seen as many 
such places as most travellers in my line, and I never saw 
one such better kept. 

Among the bedridden there was great patience, great 
reliance on the books under the pillow, great faith in God. 
All cared for sympathy, but none much cared to be en- 
couraged with hope of recovery ; on the whole, I should 
say, it was considered rather a distinction to have a com- 
plication of disorders, and to be .in a worse way than the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


27 


rest. From some of the windows the river could he seen 
with all its life and movement ; the day was bright, but 
I came upon no one who was looking out. 

In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of 
distinction, like the President and Vice of the good com- 
pany, were two old women upwards of ninety years of 
age. The younger of the two, just turned ninety, was 
deaf, but not very, and could easily be made to hear. In 
her early time she had nursed a child, who was now an- 
other old woman, more infirm than herself, inhabiting the 
very same chamber. She perfectly understood this when 
the matron told it, and, with sundry nods and motions of 
her forefinger, pointed out the woman in question. The 
elder of this pair, ninety-three, seated before an illustrat- 
ed newspaper (but not reading it), was a bright-eyed old 
soul, really not deaf, wonderfully preserved, and amazing- 
ly conversational. She had not long lost her husband, 
and had been in that place little more than a year. At 
Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, this poor creature 
would have been individually addressed, would have been 
tended in her own room, and would have had her life 
gently assimilated to a comfortable life out of doors. 
Would that be much to do in England for a woman who 
has kept herself out of a workhouse more than ninety 
rough long years ? When Britain first, at Heaven’s com- 
mand, arose, with a great deal of allegorical confusion, 
from out the azure main, did her guardian angels posi- 
tively forbid it in the Charter which has been so much 
besung ? 

The object of my journey was accomplished when the 
nimble matron had no more to show me. As I shook 
hands with her at the gate, I told her that I thought Jus- 
tice had not used her very well, and that the wise men of 
the East were not infallible. 

How I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey 
home again, concerning those Foul wards. They ought 
not to exist : no person of common decency and humanity 
can see them and doubt it. But what is this Union to 
do ? The necessary alteration would cost several thou- 
sands of pounds ; it has already to support three work- 
houses ; its inhabitants work hard for their bare lives, and 
are already rated for the relief of the Poor to the utmost 


28 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


extent of reasonable endurance. One poor parish in this 
very Union is rated to the amount of Five and sixpence in 
the pound, at the very same time when the rich parish of 
Saint George^s, Hanover Square, is rated at about Seven- 
pence in the pound ; Paddington at about Fourpence ; 
Saint James’s, Westminster, at about Tenpence ! It is on- 
ly through the equalization of Poor Rates that what is left 
undone in this wise can be done. Much more is left un- 
done or is ill done than I have space to suggest in these 
notes of a single uncommercial journey ; but the wise men 
of the East, before they can reasonably hold forth about 
it, must look to the North and South and West ; let them 
also, any morning before taking the seat of Solomon, 
look, into the shops and dwellings all around the Temple, 
and first ask themselves, “ How much more can these 
poor people — many of whom keep themselves with diffi- 
culty enough out of the workhouse — bear? ” 

I had yet other matter for reflection, as I journeyed 
home, inasmuch as, before I altogether departed from the 
neighborhood of Mr. Baker’s trap, I had knocked at the 
gate of the workhouse of St. George’ s-in-the-East, and had 
found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those 
parts, and thoroughly well administered by a most intelli- 
gent master. I remarked in it an instance of the collat- 
eral harm that obstinate vanity and folly can do. “ This 
was the Hall where those old paupers, male and female, 
whom I had just seen, met for the Church service, — was 
it ? ” “ Yes.” — '' Did they sing the Psalms to any instru- 
ment ? ” — “ They would like to very much ; they would 
have an extraordinary interest in doing so.” — “ And could 
none be got ? ” — Well, a piano could even have been 
got for nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions — ” 
Ah 1 better, far better, my Christian friend in the beauti- 
ful garment, to have let the singing boys alone, and left 
the multitude to sing for themselves I You should know 
better than I, but I think I have read that they did so, 
once upon a time, and that when they had sung an 
hymn,” Some one (not in a beautiful garment) went up 
unto the Mount of Olives. 

It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling 
in the streets of a city where every stone seemed to call 
to me as I walked along, ‘‘ Turn this way, man, and see 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


29 


what waits to be done I So I decoyed myself into an- 
other train of thought to ease my heart. But I donH 
know that I did it, for I was so full of paupers, that it 
was, after all, only a change to a single pauper, who took 
possession of my remembrance instead of a thousand. 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,’^ he had said, in a confiden- 
tial manner, on another occasion, taking me aside ; but 
I have seen better days.^^ 

I am very sorry to hear it.^^ 

“ Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.’^ 
I have no power herej I assure you. And if I had — 

“ But allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself 
and a man who has seen better days, sir. The master 
and myself are both masons, sir, and I make him the sign 
continually ; but because I am in this unfortunate posi- 
tion, sir, he won^t give me the countersign I 


30 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


lY. 


TWO VIEWS OP A CHEAP THEATRE, 

As I sliut the door of my lodging behind me, and came 
out into the streets at six on a drizzling Saturday evening 
in the last past month of January, all that neighborhood 
of Covent Garden looked very desolate. It is so essen- 
tially a neighborhood which has seen better days, that bad 
weather affects it sooner than another place which has not 
come down in the world. In its present reduced condi- 
tion, it bears a thaw almost worse, than any place I know. 
It gets so dreadfully low-spirited, when damp breaks forth. 
Those wonderful houses about Drury Lane Theatre, which 
in the palmy days of theatres were prosperous and long- 
settled places of business, and which now change hands 
every week, but never change their character of being di- 
vided and subdivided on the ground-floor into mouldy dens 
of shops, where an orange and half a dozen nuts, or a po- 
matum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar-box, are 
offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully con- 
templated that evening by the statue of Shakespeare, with 
the rain-drops coursing one another down its innocent 
nose. Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, with nothing 
in them (not so much as an inkstand) but a model of a 
theatre before the curtain, where, in the Italian Opera sea- 
son, tickets at reduced prices are kept on sale by nomadic 
gentlemen in smeary hats too tall for them, whom one oc- 
casionally seems to have seen on race-courses, not wholly 
unconnected with strips of cloth of various colors and a 
rolling ball, — those Bedouin establishments, deserted by 
the tribe, and tenantless except when sheltering in one 
corner an irregular row of ginger-beer bottles which would 
have made one shudder on such a night but for its being 
plain that they had nothing in them, shrunk from the shrill 
cries of the newsboys at their Exchange in the kennel of 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


31 


Catherine Street, like guilty things upon a fearful sum- 
mons. At the pipe-shop in Great Kussell Street; the 
Death’s-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori, ad- 
monishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an 
Institution. I walked up Bow Street, disposed to be an- 
gry with the shops there that were letting out theatrical 
secrets by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff 
of which diadems and robes of kings are made. I noticed 
that some shops which had once been in the dramatic line, 
and had struggled out of it, were not getting on prosper- 
ously, — like some actors I have known, who took to busi- 
ness, and failed to make it answer. In a word, those 
streets looked so dull, and, considered as theatrical streets, 
so broken and bankrupt, that the Found Dead on the black- 
board at the police station might have announced the de- 
cease of the Drama, and the pools of water outside the 
fire-engine maker’s at the corner of Long Acre might have 
been occasioned by his having brought out the whole of 
his stock to play upon its last smouldering ashes. 

And yet, on such a night, in so degenerate a time, the 
object of my journey was theatrical. And yet within half 
an hour I was in an immense theatre, capable of holding 
nearly five thousand people. 

What theatre ? Her Majesty’s ? Far better. Royal 
Italian Opera ? Far better. Infinitely superior to the 
latter for hearing in ; infinitely superior to both for seeing 
in. To every part of this Theatre spacious fire-proof ways 
of ingress and egress. For every part of it convenient 
places of refreshment, and retiring-rooms. Everything to 
eat and drink carefully supervised as to quality, and sold 
at an appointed price ; respectable female attendants 
ready for the commonest women in the audience ; a gen- 
eral air of consideration, decorum, and supervision most 
commendable ; an unquestionably humanizing influence 
ill all the social arrangements of the place. 

Surely a dear Theatre, then ? Because there were in 
London (not very long ago) Theatres with entrance prices 
up to half a guinea a head, whose arrangements were not 
half so civilized. Surely, therefore, a dear Theatre ? Not 
very dear. A gallery at threepence, another gallery at 
fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls at a shil- 
ling, and a few private boxes at half a crown. 


32 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into ev- 
ery nook of this great place, and among every class of 
the audience assembled in it, — amounting that evening, 
as I calculated, to about two thousand and odd hundreds. 
Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chan- 
deliers, the building was ventilated to perfection. My 
sense of smell, without being particularly delicate, has 
been so offended in some of the commoner places of pub- 
lic resort, that I have often been obliged to leave them 
when I have made an uncommercial journey expressly to 
look on. The air of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and 
wholesome. To help towards this end very sensible pre- 
cautions had been used, ingeniously combining the expe- 
rience of hospitals and railway stations. Asphalte pave- 
ments substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of 
glazed brick and tile — even at the back of the boxes — 
for plaster and paper, no benches stuffed, and no carpet- 
ing or baize used ; a cool material with a light glazed 
surface being the covering of the seats. 

These various contrivances are as well considered in 
the place in question as if it were a Fever Hospital ; the 
result is that it is sweet and healthful. It has been con- 
structed from the ground to the roof with a careful refer- 
ence to sight and sound in every corner ; the result is that 
its form is beautiful, and that the appearance of the audi- 
ence, as seen from the proscenium, — with every face in 
it commanding the stage, and the whole so admirably 
raked and turned to that centre, that a hand can scarcely 
move in the great assemblage without the movement being 
seen from thence, — is highly remarkable in its union of 
vastness with compactness. The stage itself, and all its 
appurtenances of machinery, cellarage, height, and breadth, 
are on a scale more like the Scala at Milan or the San 
Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any 
notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia 
Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke’s Hospital in 
the Old Street Road, London. The Forty Thieves 
might be played here, and every thief ride his real horse, 
and the disguised captain bring in his oil jars on a train 
of real camels, and nobody be put out of the way. This 
really extraordinary place is the achievement of one man’s 
enterprise, and was erected on the ruins of an inconven- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


33 


lent old building, in less than five months, at a round 
cost of five-and-twenty thousand pounds. To dismiss this 
part of my subject, and still to render to the proprietor 
the credit that is strictly his due, I must add that his 
sense of the responsibility upon him to make the best of 
his audience, and do his best for them, is a highly agree- 
able sign of these times. 

As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will 
presently show, were the object of my journey, I entered 
on the play of the night as one of the two thousand and 
odd hundreds by looking about me at my neighbors. We 
were a motley assemblage of people, and we had a good 
many boys and young men among us ; we had also many 
girls and young women. To represent, however, that we 
did not include a very great number, and a very fair pro- 
portion of family groups, would be to make a gross mis- 
statement. Such groups were to be seen in all parts of 
the house ; in the boxes and stalls particularly, they were 
composed of persons of very decent appearance, who had 
many children with them. Among our dresses there were 
most kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian 
and corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant. The 
caps of our young men were mostly of a limp character, and 
we who wore them slouched, high-shouldered, into our pla- 
ces, with our hands in our pockets, and occasionally twisted 
our cravats about our necks like eels, and occasionally 
tied them down our breasts like links of sausages, and oc- 
casionally had a screw in our hair over each cheek-bone 
with a slight Thief-flavor in it. Besides prowlers and 
idlers, we were mechanics, dock-laborers, costermongers, 
petty tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe- 
binders, slop-workers, poor workers in a hundred high- 
ways and byways. Many of us — on the whole, the ma- 
jority — were not at all clean, and not at all choice incur 
lives or conversation. But we had all come together in 
a place where our convenience was well consulted, and 
where we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening^s 
entertainment in common. We were not going to lose 
any part of what we had paid for through anybody's 
caprice, and as a community we had a character to lose. 
So we were closely attentive, and kept excellent order ) 
and let the man or boy who did otherwise instantly get 
3 


34 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


out from this place, or we would put him out with the 
greatest expedition. 

We began at half past six with a pantomime, — with a 
pantomime so long, that before it was over I felt as if I 
had been travelling for six weeks, — going to India, say, 
by the Overland Mail. The Spirit of Liberty was the 
principal personage in the Introduction, and the Four 
Quarters of the World came out of the globe, glittering, 
and discoursed with the Spirit, who sang charmingly. We 
were delighted to understand that there was no Liberty 
anywhere but among ourselves, and we highly applaud- 
ed the agreeable fact. In an allegorical way, which did 
as well as any other way, we and the Spirit of Liberty 
got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them 
at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their old 
archenemy Rust, and who would have got the better of 
them if the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time 
transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, 
Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of Sprites, 
consisting of a remarkably stout father and three spine- 
less sons. We all knew what was coming when the 
Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with the big face, and 
his Majesty backed to the side-scenes and began untying 
himself behind, with his big face all on one side. Our 
excitement at that crisis was great, and our delight un- 
bounded. After this era in our existence, we went 
through all the incidents of a pantomime. It was not by 
any means a savage pantomime in the way of burning or 
boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cut- 
ting them up ; was often very droll ; was always liberally 
got up, and cleverly presented. I noticed that the peo- 
ple who kept the shops, and who represented the passen- 
gers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no conven- 
tionality in them, but were unusually like the real thing, 
— from which I infer that you may take that audience in 
(if you wish to) concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, 
Angels, or such like, but they are not to be done as to 
anything in the streets. I noticed, also, that when two 
young men, dressed in exact imitation of the eel-and- 
sausage-cravatted portion of the audience, were chased by 
policemen, and, finding themselves in danger of being 
caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the policemen 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


35 


to tumble over them, there was great rejoicing among the 
caps, — as though it were a delicate reference to some- 
thing they had heard of before. 

The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melodrama. 
Throughout the evening I was pleased to observe Virtue 
quite as triumphant as she usually is out of doors, and 
indeed I thought rather more so. We all agreed (for the 
time) that honesty was the best policy, and we were as 
hard as iron upon Vice, and we would n^t hear of Villany 
getting on in the world, — no, not on any consideration 
whatever. 

Between the pieces we almost all of us went out and 
refreshed. Many of us went the length of drinking beer 
at the bar of the neighboring public-house, some of us 
drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger- 
beer at the refreshment bars established for us in the 
Theatre. The sandwich — as substantial as was consist- 
ent with portability, and as cheap as possible — we hailed 
as one of our greatest institutions. It forced its way 
among us at all stages of the entertainment, and we were 
always delighted to see it ; its adaptability to the vary- 
ing moods of our nature was surprising ; we could never 
weep so comfortably as when our tears fell on our sand- 
wich ; we could never laugh so heartily as when we 
choked with sandwich ; Virtue never looked so beautiful 
or Vice so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in 
hand, to consider what would come of that resolution of 
Wickedness in boots to sever Innocence in flowered chintz 
from Honest Industry in striped stockings. When the 
curtain fell for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, 
to help us through the rain and mire, and home to bed. 

This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night. Being 
Saturday night, I had accomplished but the half of my 
uncommercial journey ; for its object was to compare the 
play on Saturday evening with the preaching in the same 
Theatre on Sunday evening. 

Therefore, at the same hour of half past six on the 
similarly damp and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to 
this Theatre. I drove up to the entrance (fearful of being 
late or I should have come on foot), and found myself in 
a large crowd of people who, I am happy to state, were 
put into excellent spirits by my arrival. Having nothing 


36 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


to look at but the mud and the closed doors, they looked 
at me, and highly enjoyed the comic spectacle. My 
modesty inducing me to draw off, some hundreds of yards, 
into a dark corner, they at once forgot me, and applied 
themselves to their former occupation of looking at the 
mud, and looking in at the closed doors, which, being of 
grated iron-work, allowed the lighted passage within to 
be seen. They were chiefly people of respectable appear- 
ance, odd and impulsive as most crowds are, and making 
a joke of being there as most crowds do. 

In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but 
that a very obliging passer-by informed me that the Thea- 
tre was already full, and that the people whom I saw in 
the street were all shut out for want of room. After that 
I lost no time in worming myself into the building, and 
creeping to a place in a proscenium box that had been 
kept for me. 

There must have been full four thousand people present. 
Carefully estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as 
holding little less than fourteen hundred. Every part of 
the house was well filled, and I had not found it easy to 
make my way along the back of the boxes to where I sat. 
The chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted ; there was no 
light on the stage ; the orchestra was empty. The green 
curtain was down, and packed pretty closely on chairs on 
the small space of stage before it were some thirty gentle- 
men, and two or three ladies. In the centre of these, in a 
desk or pulpit covered with red baize, was the presiding 
minister. The kind of rostrum he occupied will be very 
well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up fireplace 
turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in a black 
surtout standing in the stove and leaning forward over the 
mantel-piece. 

A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in. 
It was followed by a discourse, to which the congregation 
listened with most exemplary attention and uninterrupted 
silence and decorum. My own attention comprehended 
both the auditory and the speaker, and shall turn to both in 
this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at the time. 

“ A very difficult thing, I thought, when the discourse 
began, “ to speak appropriately to so large an audience, 
and to speak with tact. Without it, better not to speak 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


37 


at all. Infinitely better to read the New Testament well, 
and to let that speak. In this congregation there is in- 
dubitably one pulse ; but I doubt if any power short of 
genius can touch it as one, and make it answer as one. 

I could not possibly say to myself, as the discourse pro- 
ceeded, that the minister was a good speaker. I could 
not possibly say to myself that he expressed an under- 
standing of the general mind and character of his audience. 
There was a supposititious workingman introduced into 
the homily, to make supposititious objections to our Chris- 
tian religion and be reasoned down, who was not only a 
very disagreeable person, but remarkably unlike life, — 
very much more unlike it than anything I had seen in the 
pantomime. The native independence of character this 
artisan was supposed to possess was represented by a 
suggestion of a dialect that I certainly never heard in my 
uncommercial travels, and with a coarse swing of voice 
and manner, anything but agreeable to his feelings, I 
should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and 
as far away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar. There 
was a model pauper introduced in like manner, who ap- 
peared to me to be the most intolerably arrogant pauper 
ever relieved, and to show himself in absolute want and 
dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard. For how did 
this pauper testify to his having received the gospel of 
humility ? A gentleman met him in the workhouse, and 
said (which I myself really thought good-natured of him), 
Ah, John I I am sorry to see you here. I am sorry to 
see you so poor.^^ Poor, sir ! ’’ replied that man, draw- 
ing himself up, “ I am the son of a Prince ! My father is 
the King of kings. My father is the Lord of lords. My 
father is the ruler of all the Princes of the Earth ! &c. 

And this was what all the preacher^s fellow-sinners might 
come to, if they would embrace this blessed book, — which 
I must say it did some violence to my own feelings of 
reverence to see held out at arm^s length at frequent in- 
tervals, and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at a sale- 
Now, could I help asking myself the question, whether 
the mechanic before me, who must detect the preacher as 
being wrong about the visible manner of himself and the 
like of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as that 
pauper, might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of 


38 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


the occasion, doubt that preacher^s being' right about 
things not visible to human senses ? 

Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such an 
audience continually as “fellow-sinners^^? Is it not 
enough to be fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering 
and striving to-day, dying to-morrow ? By our common hu- 
manity, my brothers and sisters, by our common capaci- 
ties for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter and 
our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach 
something better than ourselves, by our common tendency 
to believe in something good, and to invest whatever we 
love or whatever we lose with some qualities that are su- 
perior to our own failings and weaknesses as we know 
them in our own poor hearts, — by these, hear me! — 
surely it is enough to be fellow-creatures. Surely it in- 
cludes the other designation, and some touching meanings 
over and above. 

Again. There was a personage introduced into the dis- 
course (not an absolute novelty, to the best of my remem- 
brance of my reading), who had been personally known to 
the preacher, and had been quite a Crichton in all the 
ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel. Many a 
time had the preacher talked with him on that subject, 
and many a time had he failed to convince that intelligent 
man. But he fell ill, and died ; and before he died he re- 
corded his conversion, — in words which the preacher had 
taken down, my fellow-sinners, and would read to you 
from this piece of paper. I must confess that to me, as 
one of an uninstructed audience, they did not appear par- 
ticularly edifying. I thought their tone extremely selfish, 
and I thought they had a spiritual vanity in them which 
was of the before-mentioned refractory pauper’s family. 

All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, 
but the slang and twang of the conventicle — as bad in its 
way as that of the House of Commons, and nothing worse 
can be said of it — should be studiously avoided under 
such circumstances as I describe. The avoidance was 
not complete on this occasion. Nor was it quite agreea- 
ble to see the preacher addressing his pet “ points ” to his 
backers on the stage, as if appealing to those disciples to 
show him up, and testify to the multitude that each of 
those points was a clincher. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


39 


But in respect of the large Christianity of his general 
tone ; of his renunciation of all priestly authority ; of his 
earnest and reiterated assurance to the people that the 
commonest among them could work out their own salva- 
tion, if they would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully fol- 
lowing Our Saviour, and that they needed the mediation 
of no erring man, — in these particulars this gentleman 
deserved all praise. Nothing could be better than the 
spirit, or the plain, emphatic words, of his discourse in 
these respects. And it was a most significant and en- 
couraging circumstance, that whenever he struck that 
chord, or whenever he described anything which Christ 
himself had done, the array of faces before him was very 
much more earnest, and very much more expressive of 
emotion, than at any other time. 

And now I am brought to the fact that the lowest part 
of the audience of the previous night was not there. 
There is no doubt about it. There was no such thing m 
that building, that Sunday evening. I have been told 
since, that the lowest part of the audience of the Victoria 
Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services. 1 
have been very glad to hear it ; but on this occasion of 
which I write, the lowest part of the usual audience of the 
Britannia Theatre decidedly and unquestionably stayed 
away When I first took my seat and looked at the 
house, my surprise at the change in its occupants was as 
s-reat as my disappointment. To the most respectable 
class of the previous evening was added a great number 
Htrane-ers attracted by curiosity, and dratts 



inffs was eight o'clock, me aauresb u<xviii 5 ^ ^ - 
full that time, and it being the custom to conclude with a 


40 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


hymn, the preacher intimated, in a few sensible words, 
that the clock had struck the hour, and that those who 
desired to go before the hymn was sung could go now, 
without giving offence. No one stirred. The hymn was 
then sung in good time and tune and unison, and its effect 
was very striking. A comprehensive, benevolent prayer 
dismissed the throng, and in seven or eight minutes there 
was nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud of dust. 

That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good 
things, I do not doubt. Nor do I doubt that they will 
work lower and lower down in the social scale, if those 
who preside over them will be very careful on two heads : 
firstly, not to disparage the places in which they speak, 
or the intelligence of their hearers ; secondly, not to set 
themselves in antagonism to the natural inborn desire of 
the mass of mankind to recreate themselves and to be 
amused. 

There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, 
to which my remarks on the discourse I heard have tended . 
In the New Testament there is the most beautiful and 
affecting history conceivable by man, and there are the 
terse models for all prayer, and for all preaching. As to 
the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers, — else why 
are they there, consider ? As to the history, tell it. Some 
people cannot read, some people will not read, many peo- 
ple (this especially holds among the young and ignorant) 
find it hard to pursue the verse form in which the book 
is presented to them, and imagine that those breaks imply 
gaps and want of continuity. Help them over that first 
stumbling-block, by setting forth the history in narrative, 
with no fear of exhausting it. You will never preach 
so well, you will never move them so profoundly, you 
will never send them away with half so much to think of. 
Which is the better interest, — Christas choice of twelve 
poor men to help in those merciful wonders among the 
poor and rejected, or the pious bullying of a whole Union- 
ful of paupers ? What is your changed philosopher to 
wretched me, peeping in at the door out of the mud of 
the streets and of my life, when you have the widow^s 
son to tell me about, the ruler’s daughter, the other figure 
at the door when the brother of the two sisters was dead, 
and one of the two ran to the mourner, crying, ‘‘ The 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


41 


Master is come, and calleth for thee ? Let the preach- 
er who will thoroughly forget himself, and remember no 
individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand up 
before four thousand men and women at the Britannia 
Theatre any Sunday night, recounting that narrative to 
them as fellow-creatures, and he shall see a sight 1 


42 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


V. 


POOR MERCAJJTILE JACK. 

Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling* aloft, and 
keeps watch on the life of poor J ack, commissioned to take 
charge of Mercantile Jack, as well as Jack of the national 
navy ? If not, who is ? What is the cherub about, and 
what are we all about, when poor Mercantile Jack is 
having his brains slowly knocked out by pennyweights, 
aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the bark Bowie-knife, — 
when he looks his last at that infernal craft, with the first 
officer's iron boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his 
dying body towed overboard in the ship^s wake, while 
the cruel wounds in it do ‘‘the multitudinous seas incar- 
nadine ? 

Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard 
the brig Beelzebub or the bark Bowie-knife, the first 
officer did half the damage to cotton that he does to men, 
there would presently arise from both sides of the Atlan- 
tic so vociferous an invocation of the sweet little cherub 
who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets 
that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged 
sword, have that gallant officer's organ of destructiveness 
out of his head in the space of a flash of lightning ? 

If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable 
of men, for I believe it with all my soul. 

This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at 
Liverpool, keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas 
for me ! I have long outgrown the state of sweet little 
cherub ; but there I was, and there Mercantile Jack was, 
and very busy he was, and very cold he was ; the snow 
yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the north- 
east winds snipping off the tops of the little waves in 
the Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones to pelt him 
with. Mercantile Jack was hard at it in the hard 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


43 


weather, — as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack 1 
He was girded to ships^ masts and funnels of steamers, 
like a forester to a great oak, scraping and painting ; he 
was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to beat 
him off ; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant 
cobwebs, reefing and splicing ; he was faintly audible 
down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo ; he was 
winding round and round at capstans melodious, monoto- 
nous, and drunk ; he was of a diabolical aspect, with 
coaling for the Antipodes ; he was washing decks bare- 
foot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast, 
though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern gir- 
dle ; he was looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair ; he 
was standing by at the shoot of the Cunard steamer, off 
to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of several butchers, 
poulterers, and fishmongers poured down into the ice- 
house ; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his 
kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very 
last moment of his shore-going existence. As though his 
senses, when released from the uproar of the elements, 
were under obligation to be confused by other turmoil, 
there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a 
clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and casks and 
timber, an incessant deafening disturbance on the quays, 
that was the very madness of sound. And as, in the 
midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his hair blown 
all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of 
his plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was shrill in 
the wind, and every little steamer coming and going 
across the Mersey was sharp in its blowing off, and every 
buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down, as if 
there were a general taunting chorus of Come along. 
Mercantile Jack ! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, 
entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out I Come along. Poor 
Mercantile Jack, and be tempest- tossed till you are 
drowned ! ’’ 

The uncommercial transaction which had brought me 
and Jack together was this : I had entered the Liverpool 
police force, that I might have a look at the various un- 
lawful traps which are every night set for Jack. As my 
term of service in that distinguished corps was short, and 
as my personal bias in the capacity of one of its members 


44 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


has ceased, no suspicion will attach to my evidence that 
it is an admirable force. Besides that it is composed, 
without favor, of the best men that can be picked, it is 
directed by an unusual intelligence. Its organization 
against fires I take to be much better than the metropoli- 
tan system, and in all respects it tempers its remarkable 
vigilance with a still more remarkable discretion. 

Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, 
and I had taken, for purposes of identification, a photo- 
graph likeness of a thief, in the portrait-room at our head 
police-office (on the whole, he seemed rather compli- 
mented by the proceeding), and I had been on police 
parade, and the small hand of the clock was moving on 
to ten, when I took up my lantern to follow Mr. Superin- 
tendent to the traps that were set for Jack. In Mr. 
Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall, well- 
looking, well set-up man of a soldierly bearing, with a 
cavalry air, a good chest, and a resolute, but not by any 
means ungentle face. He carried in his hand a plain 
black walking-stick of hard wood ; and whenever and 
wherever, at any after-time of the night, he struck it on 
the pavement with a ringing sound, it instantly produced 
a whistle out of the darkness, and a policeman. To this 
remarkable stick I refer an air of mystery and magic 
which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among the 
traps that were set for Jack. 

We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes 
of the port. Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful dis- 
course, before a dead wall apparently some ten miles long, 
Mr. Superintendent struck upon the ground, and the wall 
opened and shot out, with military salute of hand to tem- 
ple, two policemen, — not in the least surprised them- 
selves, not in the least surprising Mr. Superintendent. 

'' All right, Sharpeye 
All right, sir.’^ 

‘‘ All right, Trampfoot ? 

All right, sir.^^ 

Is Quickear there ? 

“ Here am I, sir.^^ 

“ Come with us.^^ 

*'Yes, sir.’^ 

So Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


45 


I went next, and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear- 
guard. Sharpeye, I soon had occasion to remark, had a 
skilful and quite professional way of opening doors, — 
touched latches delicately, as if they were keys of musical 
instruments, — opened every door he touched, as if he 
were perfectly confident that there was stolen property 
behind it, — instantly insinuated himself to prevent its be- 
ing shut. 

Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set 
for Jack, but Jack did not happen to be in any of them. 
They were all such miserable places that really. Jack, if 
I were you, I would give them a wider berth. In every 
trap somebody was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack. 
Now it was a crouching old woman, like the picture of the 
Norwood Gypsy in the old sixpenny dream-books ; now it 
was a crimp of the male sex in a checked shirt and with- 
out a coat, reading a newspaper ; now it was a man crimp 
and a woman crimp, who always introduced themselves 
as united in holy matrimony ; now it was Jack’s delight, 
his (un)lovely Nan ; but they were all waiting for Jack, 
and were all frightfully disappointed to see us. 

“ Who have you got up stairs here ? ” says Sharpeye, 
generally. (In the Move-on tone.) 

‘‘ Nobody, surr ; sure not a blessed sowl I ” (Irish 
feminine reply.) 

‘‘ What do you mean by nobody ? Did n’t I hear a wo- 
man’s step go up stairs when my hand was on the latch ? ” 

“ Ah ! sure thin you ’re right, surr, I forgot her I ’T is 
on’y Betsy White, surr. Ah ! you know Betsy, surr. 
Come down, Betsy darlin’, and say the gintlemin.” 

Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep 
staircase is in the room) with a forcible expression, in her 
protesting face, of an intention to compensate herself for 
the present trial by grinding Jack finer than usual when 
he does come. Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr. Super- 
intendent, and says, as if the subjects of his remarks were 
waxwork : — 

'' One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman has 
been indicted three times. This man ’s a regular bad one 
likewise. His real name is Pegg. Gives himself out as 
Waterhouse.’’ 

'' Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, 


46 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


since I was in this house, bee the good Lard ! says the 
woman. 

Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes ex- 
ceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends to read his pa- 
per with rapt attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs our 
observation, with a look, to the prints and pictures that 
are invariably numerous on the walls. Always Tramp- 
foot and Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep. In 
default of Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact indi- 
viduality of any gentleman encountered, one of these two 
is sure to proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff spectre, 
that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fo- 
gle ; or that Canlon is Walker’s brother, against whom 
there was not sufficient evidence ; or that the man who 
says he never was at sea since he was a boy came ashore 
from a voyage last Thursday or sails to-morrow morning. 

And that is a bad class of man, you see,” says Mr. Su- 
perintendent, when he got out into the dark again, and 
very difficult to deal with, who, when he has made this 
place too hot to hold him, enters himself for a voyage as 
steward or cook, and is out of knowledge for months, and 
then turns up again worse than ever.” 

When we had gone into many such houses, and had 
come out (always leaving everybody relapsing into wait- 
ing for Jack), we started off to a singing-house where 
Jack was expected to muster strong. 

The vocalization was taking place in a long low room 
up stairs ; at one end an orchestra of two performers, and 
a small platform ; across the room a series of open pews 
for Jack, with an aisle down the middle ; at the other end 
a larger pew than the rest, entitled Snug, and reserved 
for mates and similar good company. About the room 
some amazing coffee-colored pictures varnished an inch 
deep, and some stuffed creatures in cases ; dotted among 
the audience, in Snug and out of Snug, the Profession- 
als,” among them the celebrated comic favorite, Mr. Ban- 
jo Bones, looking very hideous with his blackened face 
and limp sugar-loaf hat ; beside him, sipping rum-and-wa- 
ter, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural colors, — a little 
heightened. 

It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered 
not a good night for Jack. At any rate. Jack did not 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


47 


show in very great force even here, though the house was 
one to which he much resorts, and where a good deal of 
money is taken. There was British Jack, a little maudlin 
and sleepy, lolling over his empty glass as if he were try- 
ing to read his fortune at the bottom ; there was Loafing 
Jack of the Stars and Stripes, rather an unpromising cus- 
tomer, with his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, 
and nothing soft about him but his cabbage-leaf hat ; 
there was Spanish Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in 
his ears, and a knife not far from his hand, if you got into 
trouble with him ; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack of 
Sweden, and Jack the Finn, looming through the smoke 
of their pipes, and turning faces that looked as if they 
were carved out of dark wood towards the young lady 
dancing the hornpipe, who found the platform so exceed- 
ingly small for it, that I had a nervous expectation of see- 
ing her, in the backward steps, disappear through the 
window. Still, if all hands had been got together, they 
would not have more than half filled the room. Observe, 
however, said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that it 
was Friday night, and, besides, it was getting on for 
twelve, and Jack had gone aboard. A sharp and watch- 
ful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, with tight 
lips, and a complete edition of Cocker’s arithmetic in each 
eye. Attended to his business himself, he said. Always 
on the spot. When he heard of talent, trusted nobody’s 
account of it, but went off by rail to see it. If true tal- 
ent, engaged it. Pounds a week for talent, — four 
pound, — five pound. Banjo Bones was undoubted tal- 
ent. Hear this instrument that was going to play, — it 
was real talent ? In truth it was very good : a kind of 
piano-accordion, played by a young girl of a delicate pret- 
tiness of face, figure, and dress, that made the audience 
look coarser. She sang to the instrument, too ; first, a 
song about village bells, and how they chimed ; then a 
song about how I went to sea ; winding up with an imi- 
tation of the bagpipes, which Mercantile Jack seemed to 
understand much the best. A good girl, said Mr. Li- 
censed Victualler. Kept herself select. Sat in Snug, not 
listening to the blandishments of Mates. Lived with 
mother. Father dead. Once a merchant well to do, but 
over-speculated himself. On delicate inquiry as to salary 


48 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


paid for item of talent under consideration, Mr. Victual- 
ler's pounds dropped suddenly to shilling’s, — still it was 
a very comfortable thing for a young person like that, you 
know ; she only went on six times a night, and was only 
required to be there from six at night to twelve. What 
was more conclusive was Mr. Victualler's assurance that 
he never allowed any language, and never sufiered any 
disturbance.^^ Sharpeye confirmed the statement, and the 
order that prevailed was the best proof of it that could ^ 
have been cited. So I came to the conclusion that poor 
Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid he does) much 
worse than trust himself to Mr. Victualler, and pass his 
evenings here. 

But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent, — said 
Trampfoot, receiving us in the street again with military 
salute, — for Dark Jack. True, Trampfoot. Ring the 
wonderful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and cause the 
spirits of the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies. 

There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark 
Jack ; he was producible. The Genii set us down in the 
little first floor of a little public-house, and there, in a 
stiflingly close atmosphere, were Dark Jack, and Dark 
Jack’s delight, his white unlovely Nan, sitting against the 
wall all round the room. More than that ; Dark Jack’s 
delight was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and 
physically, that I saw that night. 

As a fiddle* and tambourine band were sitting among 
the company, Quickear suggested. Why not strike up ? 

“ Ah, la’ads I ” said a negro sitting by the door, “ gib the 
jebblem a darnse. Tak’ yah pardlers, jebblem, for ’um 
QUAD-rill.” 

This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half 
Greek and half English. As master of the ceremonies he 
called all the figures, and occasionally addressed himself 
parenthetically after this manner. When he was very 
loud, I use capitals. 

‘'Now den ! Hoy I One. Right and left. (Put a steam 
on, gib ’um powder.) LA-dies’ chail. Bal-Ioou say. Lem- 
onade ! Two. An-warnse and go back (gib ’ell a break- 
down, shake it out o’ yerselbs, keep a movil). Swing cor- 
ners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!) Theee. Gent 
come for’ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite come 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


49 


for’ard and do what yer can. (Aeiohoy !) BAL-loon say, 
and leetle lemonade. (Dat hair nigger by ^um fireplace ^hind 
a^ time, shake it out o^ yerselbs, gib ^ell a breakdown. ) 
Now den ! Hoy I Four ! Lemonade. BAL-loon say, and 
swing. Four ladies meets in ^um middle, FouRg-ents goes 
round ^um ladies, four gents passes out under him ladies^ 
arms, swing, — and Lemonade till ’a. moosic canH play no 
more I (Hoy, Hoy 

The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an un- 
usually powerful man of six feet three or four. The 
sound of their flat feet on the floor was as unlike the 
sound of white feet as their faces were unlike white faces. 
They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, double- 
double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the time out 
rarely, dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a 
childish good-humored enjoyment that was very prepos- 
sessing. They generally kept together, these poor fel- 
lows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a 
disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the neighbor- 
ing streets. But if I were Light Jack, I should be very 
slow to interfere oppressively with Dark Jack ; for when- 
ever I have had to do with him, I have found him a sim- 
ple and a gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked 
his friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, 
in wishing him good night, and thus it fell out that the 
last words I heard him say, as I blundered down the worn 
stairs, were, '' Jebblem^s elth I Ladies drinks fust ! ” 

The night was now well on into the morning, but for 
miles and hours we explored a strange world, where no- 
body ever goes to bed, but everybody is eternally sitting 
up, waiting for Jack. This exploration was among a 
labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, 
kept in wonderful order by the police, and in much better 
order than by the corporation ; the want of gas-light in 
the most dangerous and infamous of these places being 
quite unworthy of so spirited a town. I need describe 
but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited 
for as specimens of the rest. Many we attained by 
noisome passages so profoundly dark that we felt our 
way with our hands. Not one of the whole number we 
visited was without its show of prints and ornamental 
crockery ; the quantity of the latter set forth on little 
4 


60 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


shelves and in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, 
indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an extraordi- 
nary fondness for crockery, to necessitate so much of that 
bait in his traps. 

Among^ such garniture, in one front parlor in the dead 
of the night, four women were sitting by a fire. One of 
them had a male child in her arms. On a stool among 
them was a swarthy youth with a guitar, who had evi- 
dently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard. 

“ Well, how do you do ? says Mr. Superintendent, 
looking about him. 

“ Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going 
to treat us ladies, now you have come to see us.^^ 

‘‘ Order there I says Sharpeye. 

“ None of that ! says Quickear. 

Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, Meg- 
gisson^s lot, this is. And a bad ^un I 

Well ? says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on 
the shoulder of the swarthy youth, ‘‘ and who ’s this ? 

“ Antonio, sir.^^ 

And what does he do here ? 

“ Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, I 
suppose ? ’’ 

“ A young foreign sailor ? 

Yes. He ’s a Spaniard. You ’re a Spaniard, ainH 
you, Antonio ? 

Me Spanish. 

And he donH know a word you say, not he ; not if 
you was to talk to him till doomsday. (Triumphantly, 
as if it redounded to the credit of the house.) 

Will he play something ? ’’ 

0 yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. You 
ain’t ashamed to play something, — are you ? ” 

The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, 
and three of the women keep time to it with their heads, 
and the fourth with the child. If Antonio has brought any 
money in with him, I am afraid he will never take it out, 
and it even strikes me that his jacket and guitar may bs 
in a bad way. But the look of the young man, and the 
tinkling of the instrument, so change the place in a mo- 
ment to a leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder where 
his mule is stabled, until he leaves off. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


51 


I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends, rather to my 
uncommercial confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in 
this establishment by having taken the child in my arms. 
For, on my offering to restore it to a ferocious joker, not 
unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother, that 
unnatural parent put her hands behind her, and declined 
to accept it ; backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly 
declaring, regardless of remonstrance from her friends, that 
she knowed it to be Law, that whoever took a child from 
its mother, of his own will, was bound to stick to it. The 
uncommercial sense of being in a rather ridiculous posi- 
tion, with the poor little child beginning to be frightened, 
was relieved by my worthy friend and fellow-constable, 
Trampfoot, who, laying hands on the article as if it were 
a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest woman, and bade 
her take hold of that.’’ As we came out, the Bottle was 
passed to the ferocious joker, and they all sat down as 
before, including Antonio and the guitar. It was clear 
that there was no such thing as a nightcap to this baby’s 
head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always 
kept up — and would grow up, kept up — waiting for 
Jack. 

Later still in the night we came (by the court “ where 
the man was murdered,” and by the other court across the 
street into which his body was dragged) to another parlor 
in another Entry, where several people were sitting round 
a fire in just the same way. It was a dirty and offensive 
place, with some ragged clothes drying in it ; but there 
was a high shelf over the entrance door (to be out of the 
reach of marauding hands, possibly) with two large white 
loaves on it, and a great piece of Cheshire cheese. 

Well ! ” says Mr. Superintendent, with a compre- 
hensive look all round. How do you do ? ” 

'‘Not much to boast of, sir,” — from the courtesying 
woman of the house. " This is my good man, sir.” 

" You are not registered as a common Lodging- 
House?-” 

" No, sir.” 

Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent 
inquiry, " Then why ain’t you ? ” 

"Ain’t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,” rejoins the wo- 
man and my good man together, " but our own family.” 


52 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


“ How many are you in family ? ” 

The woman takes time to count, under pretence of 
coughing, and adds, as one scant of breath, “ Seven, 
sir.” 

But she has missed one ; so Sharpeye, who knows all 
about it, says, — 

“ Here ’s a young man here makes eight, who ain’t of 
your family ? ” 

“ No, Mr. Sharpeye, he ’s a weekly lodger.” 

“ What does he do for a living ? ” 

The young man here takes the reply upon himself, 
and shortly answers, “ Ain’t got nothing to do.” 

The young man here is modestly brooding behind a 
damp apron pendent from a clothes-line. As I glance 
at him I become — but I don’t know why — vaguely re- 
minded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover. 
When we get out, my respected fellow-constable Sharp- 
eye, addressing Mr. Superintendent, says, — 

“ You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby’s ? ” 

“ Yes. What is he ? ” 

“ Deserter, sir.” 

Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have 
done with his services, he will step back and take that 
young man. Which in the course of time he does ; feel- 
ing at perfect ease about finding him, and knowing for 
a moral certainty that nobody in that region will be 
gone to bed. 

Later still in the night we came to another parlor up 
a step or two from the street, which was very cleanly, 
neatly, even tastefully, kept, and in which, set forth on 
a draped chest of drawers masking the staircase, was 
such a profusion of ornamental crockery that it would 
have furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair. It 
backed up a stout old lady, — Hogakth drew her exact 
likeness more than once, — and a boy who was carefully 
writing a copy in a copy-book. 

“ Well, ma’am, how do you do ? ” 

Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly. 
Charmingly, charmingly. And overjoyed to see us ! 

“ Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writ- 
ing his copy, — in the middle of the night ! ” 

“ So it is, dear gentlemen. Heaven bless your welcome 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


53 


faces and send ye prosperous 1 but he has been to the 
Play with a young friend for his diversion, and he combi- 
nates his improvement with entertainment, by doing his 
school- writing afterwards, God be good to ye ! 

The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the 
fire of every fierce desire. One might have thought it 
recommended stirring the fire, the old lady so approved it. 
There she sat, rosily beaming at the copy-book and tlie 
boy, and invoking showers of blessings on our heads, when 
we left her in the middle of the night waiting for Jack. 

Later still in the night we came to a nauseous room 
with an earth floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley 
trickled. The stench of this habitation was abominable ; 
the seeming poverty of it diseased and dire. Yet here 
again was visitor or lodger, — a man sitting before the 
fire, like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently not 
distasteful to the mistress’s niece, who was also before the 
fire. The mistress herself had the misfortune of being in 
jail. 

Three weird • old women of transcendent ghastliness 
were at needle-work at a table in this room. Says Tramp- 
foot to First Witch, '‘What are you making?” Says 
she, " Money-bags.” 

" What are you making ? ” retorts Trampfoot, a little 
off his balance. 

" Bags to hold your money,” says the witch, shaking 
her head, and setting her teeth, — " you as has got it.” 

She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a 
heap of such bags. Witch Two laughs at us. Witch 
Three scowls at us. Witch sisterhood all stitch, stitch. 
First Witch has a red circle round each eye. I fancy it 
like the beginning of the development of a perverted dia- 
bolical halo, and that, when it spreads all round her head, 
she will die in the odor of devilry. 

Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has 
got behind the table, down by the side of her, there. 
Witches Two and Three croak, angrily, " Show him the 
child I ” 

She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dust- 
heap on the ground. Adjured not to disturb the child, 
she lets it drop again. Thus we find at last that there is 
one child in the world of Entries who goes to bed, — if 
this be bed. 


54 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Mr. Superintendent asks. How long are they going to 
work at those bags ? 

How long ? First Witch repeats. Going to have sup- 
per presently. See the cups and saucers, and the plates. 

‘‘ Late ? Ay I But we has to ^arn our supper afore we 
eats it I Both the other witches repeat this after First 
Witch, and take the Uncommercial measurement with 
their eyes, as for a charmed winding-sheet. Some grim 
discourse ensues, referring to the mistress of the cave, 
who will be released from jail to-morrow. Witches pro- 
nounce Trampfoot “ right there, when he deems it a try- 
ing distance for the old lady to walk ; she . shall be fetched 
by niece in a spring-cart. 

As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning 
away, the red marks round her eyes seemed to have 
already grown larger, and she hungrily and thirstily 
looked out beyond me into the dark doorway to see if 
Jack were there. For Jack came even here, and the mis- 
tress had got into jail through deluding Jack. 

When I at last ended this night of travel, and got to 
bed, I failed to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of 
Seaman’s Homes (not overdone with strictness), and im- 
proved dock regulations giving Jack greater benefit of fire 
and candle aboard ship, through my mind’s wandering 
among the vermin I had seen. Afterwards the same 
vermin ran all over my sleep. Evermore, when on a 
breezy day I see Poor Mercantile Jack running into port 
with a fair wind under all sail, I shall think of the un- 
sleeping host of devourers who never go to bed, and are 
always in their set traps waiting for him. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


55 


71 . 


REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS. 

In the late high winds I was blown to a great many 
places, — and indeed, wind or no wind, I generally have 
extensive transactions on hand in the article of Air, — but 
I have* not been blown to any English place lately, and I 
very seldom have blown to any English place in my life, 
where I could get anything good to eat and drink in five 
minutes, or where, if I sought it, I was received with a 
welcome. 

This is a curious thing to consider. But before (stimu- 
lated by my own experiences and the representations of 
many fellow-travellers of every uncommercial and com- 
mercial degree) I consider it further, I must utter a 
passing word of wonder concerning high winds. 

I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard 
at Walworth. I cannot imagine what Walworth has done 
to bring such windy punishment upon itself as I never 
fail to find recorded in the newspapers when the wind has 
blown at all hard. Brixton seems to have something on 
its conscience ; Beckham suffers more than a virtuous 
Beckham might be supposed to deserve ; the howling 
neighborhood of Deptford figures largely in the accounts 
of the ingenious gentlemen who are out in every wind 
that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind that blows 
no good ; but there can hardly be any Walworth left by 
this time. It must surely be blown away. I have read 
of more chimney-stacks and house-copings coming down 
with terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred 
edifices being nearly (not quite) blown out to sea from 
the same accursed locality, than I have read of practised 
thieves with the appearance and manners of gentlemen, 
— a popular phenomenon which never existed on earth 
out of fiction and a police report. Again : I wonder why 


56 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


people are always blown into the Surrey Canal, and into 
no other piece of water ! Why do people get up early, 
and go out in groups, to be blown into the Surrey Canal ? 
Do they say to one another, Welcome death, so that we 
get into the newspapers ! Even that would be an insuf- 
ficient explanation, because even then they might some- 
times put themselves in the way of being blown into the 
Regent^ s Canal, instead of always saddling Surrey for the 
field. Some nameless policeman, too, is constantly, on 
the slightest provocation, getting himself blown into this 
same Surrey Canal. Will Sir Richard Mayne see to it, 
and restrain that weak-minded and feeble-bodied consta- 
ble ? 

To resume the consideration of the curious question of 
Refreshment. I am a Briton, and, as such, I am aware 
that I never will be a slave, — and yet I have latent sus- 
picion that there must be some slavery of wrong custom 
in this matter. 

I travel by railroad. I start from home at seven or eight 
in the morning, after breakfasting hurriedly. What with 
skimming over the open landscape, what with mining in 
the damp bowels of the earth, what with banging, boom- 
ing, and shrieking the scores of miles away, I am hungry 
when I arrive at the ‘‘ Refreshment station where I am 
expected. Please to observe, — expected. I have said 
I am hungry ; perhaps I might say, with greater point 
and force, that I am to some extent exhausted, and 
that I need — in the expressive French sense of the word 
— to be restored. What is provided for my restoration ? 
The apartment that is to restore me is a wind-trap, cun- 
ningly set to inveigle all the draughts in that country- 
side, and to communicate a special intensity and velocity 
to them as they rotate in two hurricanes, — one about my 
wretched head, one about my wretched legs. The train- 
ing of the young ladies behind the counter who are to 
restore me has been from their infancy directed to the 
assumption of a defiant dramatic show that I am not 
expected. It is in vain for me to represent to them, by 
my humble and conciliatory manners, that I wish to be 
liberal. It is in vain for me to represent to myself, for 
the encouragement of my sinking soul, that the young 
ladies have a pecuniary interest in my arrival. Neither 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


67 


my reason nor my feelings can make head against the 
cold glazed glare of eye with which I am assured that I 
am not expected, and not wanted. The solitary man 
among the bottles would sometimes take pity on me, if 
he dared, but he is powerless against the rights and 
mights of Woman. (Of the page I make no account, for 
he is a boy, and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.) 
Chilling fast in the deadly tornadoes to which my upper 
and lower extremities are exposed, and subdued by the 
moral disadvantage at which I stand, I turn my discon- 
solate eyes on the refreshments that are to restore me. 
I find that I must either scald my throat by insanely 
ladling into it, against time and for no wager, brown hot 
water stiffened with flour ; or I must make myself flaky 
and sick with Banbury cake ; or I must stuff into my 
delicate organization a currant pincushion which I know 
will swell into immeasurable dimensions when it has got 
there ; or I must extort from an iron-bound quarry, with 
a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable soil, some 
glutinous lumps of gristle and grease called pork-pie. 
While thus forlornly occupied, I find that the depressing 
banquet on the table is, in every phase of its profound- 
ly unsatisfactory character, so like the banquet at the 
meanest and shabbiest of evening parties, that I begin to 
think I must have “brought down to supper the old la- 
dy unknown, blue with cold, who is setting her teeth on 
edge with a cool orange at my elbow ; that the pastry- 
cook who has compounded for the company on the lowest 
terms per head is a fraudulent bankrupt, redeeming his 
contract with the stale stock from his window ; that, for 
some unexplained reason, the family giving the party 
have become my mortal foes, and have given it on pur- 
pose to affront me. Or I fancy that I am “ breaking up 
again at the evening conversazione at school, charged 
two and sixpence in the half-year^s bill ; or breaking down 
again at that celebrated evening party given at Mrs. 
Bogles^s boarding-house when I was a boarder there, on 
which occasion Mrs. Bogles was taken in execution by 
a branch of the legal profession who got in as the harp, 
and was removed (with the keys and subscribed capital) 
to a place of durance, half an hour prior to the commence 
ment of the festivities. 


58 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Take another case. 

Mr. Grazinglahds, of the Midland Counties; came to 
London by railroad one morning last week, accompanied 
by the amiable and fascinating Mrs. Grazin glands. Mr. 
G. is a gentleman of a comfortable property, and had a 
little business to transact at the Bank of England, which 
required the concurrence and signature of Mrs. G. Their 
business disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands viewed 
the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of St. Paul’s Cathe- 
dral. The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands then gradually 
beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who is the tender- 
est of husbands) remarked, with sympathy, Arabella, 
my dear, I fear you are faint.” Mrs. Grazinglands re- 
plied, “ Alexander, I am rather faint ; but don’t mind me, 
I shall be better presently.” Touched by the feminine 
meekness of this answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in 
at a pastry-cook’s window, hesitating as to the expedi- 
ency of lunching at that establishment. He beheld noth- 
ing to eat but butter in various forms, slightly charged 
with jam, and languidly frizzling over tepid water. Two 
ancient turtle-shells, on which was inscribed the legend. 

Soups,” decorated a glass partition within, enclosing a 
stufiy alcove, from which a ghastly mockery of a mar- 
riage-breakfast, spread on a rickety table, warned the 
terrified traveller. An oblong box of stale and broken 
pastry at reduced prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented 
the doorway ; and two high chairs, that looked as if they 
were performing on stilts, embellished the counter. Over 
the whole a young lady presided, whose gloomy haughti- 
ness, as she surveyed the street, announced a deep-seat- 
ed grievance against society, and an implacable determi- 
nation to be avenged. From a beetle-haunted kitchen 
below :his institution, fumes arose, suggestive of a class 
of soup which Mr. Grazinglands knew, from painful 
experience, enfeebles the mind, distends the stomach, 
forces itself into the complexion, and tries to ooze out 
at the eyes. As he decided against entering, and turned 
away, Mrs. Grazinglands, becoming perceptibly weaker, 
repeated, '' I am rather faint, Alexander, but don’t mind 
me.” Urged to new efforts by these words of resigna- 
tion, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a cold and floury 
baker’s shop, where utilitarian buns, unrelieved by a cur- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


69 


rant, consorted with hard biscuits, a stone filter of cold wa- 
ter, a hard pale clock, and a hard little old woman with 
flaxen hair, of an undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if 
she had been fed upon seeds. He might have entered 
even here but for the timely remembrance coming upon 
him that Jairing^s was but round the corner. 

Now, Jairing’s being an hotel for families and gentle- 
men, in high repute among the midland counties, Mr. 
Grazinglands plucked up a great spirit when he told Mrs. 
Grazinglands she should have a chop there. That lady 
likewise felt that she was going to see Life. Arriving on 
that gay and festive scene, they found the second waiter, 
in a flabby undress, cleaning the windows of the empty 
coffee-room ; and the first waiter, denuded of his white 
tie, making up his cruets behind the Post-OflSce Directory. 
The latter (who took them in hand) was greatly put out 
by their patronag*e, and showed his mind to be troubled 
by a sense of the pressing necessity of instantly smug- 
gling Mrs. Grazinglands into the obscurest corner of the 
building. This slighted lady (who is the pride of her 
division of the county) was immediately conveyed, by 
several dark passages, and up and down several steps, 
into a penitential apartment at the back of the house, 
where five invalided old plate-warmers leaned up against 
one another under a discarded old melancholy sideboard, 
and where the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables in 
the house lay thick. Also, a sofa, of incomprehensible 
form regarded from any sofane point of view, murmured, 

Bed ; while an air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps 
added, Second Waiter^s.’^ Secreted in this dismal 
hold, objects of a mysterious distrust and suspicion, Mr. 
Grazinglands and his charming partner waited twenty 
minutes for the smoke (for it never came to a fire), twen- 
ty-five minutes for the sherry, half an hour for the table- 
cloth, forty minutes for the knives and forks, three quar- 
ters of an hour for the chops, and an hour for the pota- 
toes. On settling the little bill, — which was not much 
more than the day^s pay of a Lieutenant in the navy, — ■ 
Mr. Grazinglands took heart to remonstrate against the 
general quality and cost of his reception. To whom the 
waiter replied, substantially, that Jairing's made it a 
merit to have accepted him on any terms, For,^^ added 


60 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


the waiter (unmistakably coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, 
the pride of her division of the county), when indiwid- 
uals is not staying in the ^Ouse, their favors is not as a 
rule looked upon as making it worth Mr. Jairing^s while ; 
nor is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing wishes.^' 
Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jair- 
ing’ s hotel for Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the 
greatest depression, scorned by the bar, and did not re- 
cover their self-respect for several days. 

Or take another case. Take your own case. 

You are going off by railway from any terminus. You 
have twenty minutes for dinner before you go. You 
want your dinner, and, like Dr. Johnson, sir, you like to 
dine. You present to your mind a picture of the refresh- 
ment-table at that terminus. The conventional shabby 
evening-party supper — accepted as the model for all ter- 
mini and all refreshment stations, because it is the last 
repast known to this state of existence of which any 
human creature would partake but in the direst extremity 
— sickens your contemplation ; and your words are 
these : “I cannot dine on stale sponge cakes that turn 
to sand in the mouth. I cannot dine on shining brown 
patties, composed of unknown animals within, and offer- 
ing to my view the device of an indigestible star-fish in 
leaden pie-crust without. I cannot dine on a sandwich 
that has long been pining under an exhausted receiver. 
I cannot dine on barley-sugar. I cannot dine on Toffee.” 
You repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive agitated in the 
coffee-room. 

It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very 
cold to you. Account for it how you may, smooth it 
over how you will, you cannot deny that he is cold to 
you. He is not glad to see you, he does not want you, 
he would much rather you had n’t come. He opposes to 
your flushed condition an immovable composure. As if 
this were not enough, another waiter, born, as it would 
seem, expressly to look at you in this passage of your 
life, stands at a little distance, with his napkin under his 
arm and his hands folded, looking at you with all his 
might. You impress on your waiter that you have ten 
minutes for dinner, and he proposes that you shall begin 
with a bit of fish which will be ready in twenty. That 


THE UNCOMMEKCIAL TRAVELLER. 


61 


proposal declined, he suggests — as a neat originality — 
'' a weal or mutton cutlet.^^ You close with either cutlet, 
any cutlet, anything. He goes leisurely behind a door, 
and calls down some unseen shaft. A ventriloquial dia- 
logue ensues, tending finally to the efiect that weal only 
is available on the spur of the moment. You anxiously 
call out, Yeal, then I Your waiter, having settled 
that point, returns to array your table-cloth with a table 
napkin folded cocked-hat wise (slowly, for something out 
of window engages his eye), a white wineglass, a green 
wineglass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful 
field battery of fourteen castors with nothing in them, or, 
at all events, — which is enough for your purpose, — 
with nothing in them that will come out. All this time 
the other waiter looks at you, — with an air of mental 
comparison and curiosity now, as if it had occurred to 
him that you are rather like his brother. Half your time 
gone, and nothing come but the jug of ale and the bread, 
you implore your waiter to '' see after that cutlet, waiter ; 
pray do ! He cannot go at once, for he is carrying in 
seventeen pounds of American cheese for you to finish 
with, and a small landed estate of celery and water- 
cresses. The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a 
new view of you doubtfully now, as if he had rejected 
the resemblance to his brother, and had begun to think 
you more like his aunt or his grandmother. Again you 
beseech your waiter, with pathetic indignation, to “ see 
after that cutlet I He steps out to see after it, and by 
and by, when you are going away without it, comes back 
with it. Even then he will not take the sham silver 
cover off without a pause for a flourish, and a look at the 
musty cutlet as if he were surprised to see it, — which 
cannot possibly be the case, he must have seen it so 
often before. A sort of fur has been produced upon its 
surface by the cook^s art, and, in a sham silver vessel 
staggering on two feet instead of three, is a cutaneous 
kind of sauce, of brown pimples and pickled cucumber. 
You order the bill, but your waiter cannot bring your bill 
yet, because he is bringing, instead, three flinty-hearted 
potatoes and two grim head of broccoli, like the occa- 
sional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled. You 
know that you will never come to this pass, any more 


62 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


than to the cheese and celery, and you imperatively de- 
mand your bill ; but it takes time to get, even when 
gone for, because your waiter has to communicate with a 
lady who lives behind a sash-window in a corner, and 
who appears to have to refer to several Ledgers before 
she can make it out, — as if you had been staying there 
a year. You become distracted to get away, and the 
other waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at 
you, — but suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to 
remind him of the party who took the great-coats last 
winter. Your bill at last brought and paid, at the rate 
of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds 
you that “ attendance is not charged for a single meal,^^ 
and you have to search in all your pockets for sixpence 
more. He has a worse opinion of you than ever, when 
you have given it to him, and lets you out into the street 
with the air of one saying to himself, as you cannot doubt 
he is, ‘‘I hope we shall never see you here again ! 

Or take any other of the numerous travelling instances 
in which, with more time at your disposal, you are, have 
been, or may be, equally ill served. Take the old-estab- 
lished Bulbs Head, with its old-established knife-boxes on 
its old-established sideboards, its old-established flue under 
its old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established 
airless rooms, its old-established frowziness up stairs and 
down stairs, its old-established cookery, and its old-estab- 
lished principles of plunder. Count up your injuries, in 
its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in white poultices, of 
apothecaries’ powders in rice for curry, of pale stewed 
bits of calf inefiectually relying for an adventitious inter- 
est on forcemeat balls. You have had experience of the 
old-established Bull’s Head’s stringy fowls, with lower 
extremities like wooden legs sticking up out of the dish ; 
of its cannibalic boiled mutton, gushing horribly among 
its capers, when carved ; of its little dishes of pastry, — 
roofs of spermaceti ointment erected over half an apple or 
four gooseberries. Well for you if you have yet forgotten 
the old-established Bull’s Head’s fruity port ; whose rep- 
iitation was gained solely by the old-established price the 
Bull’s Head put upon it, and by the old-established air 
with which the Bull’s Head set the glasses and D’Oyleys 
on, and held that Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


63 


wax-candle, as if its old-established color hadn’t come 
from the dyer’s. 

Or lastly, take, to finish with, two cases that we all 
know every day. 

We all know the new hotel near the station, where it is 
always gusty, going up the lane which is always muddy, 
where we are sure to arrive at night, and where we make 
the gas start awfully when we open the front door. We 
all know the flooring of the passages and staircases that 
is too new, and the walls that are too new, and the house 
that is haunted by the ghost of mortar. We all know the 
doors that have cracked, and the cracked shutters through 
which we get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon. We 
all know the new people who have come to keep the new 
hotel, and who wish they had never come, and who (in- 
evitable result) wish we had never come. We all know 
how much too scant and smooth and bright the new fur- 
niture is, and how it has never settled down, and cannot 
fit itself into right places, and will get into wrong places. 
We all know how the gas, being lighted, shows maps of 
Damp upon the walls. We all know how the ghost of 
mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up 
to bed with us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and 
prevents the smoke from following. We all know how a 
leg of our chair comes off at breakfast in the morning, 
and how the dejected waiter attributes the accident to a 
general greenness pervading the establishment, and in- 
forms us, in reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful 
to say he is an entire stranger in that part of the country, 
and is going back to his own connection on Saturday. 

We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel, 
belonging to the company of proprietors, which has sud- 
denly sprung up in the back outskirts of any place we 
like to name, and where we look out of our palatial win- 
dows at little back-yards and gardens, old summer-houses, 
fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties. We all know 
this hotel in which we can get anything we want, after 
its kind, for money ; but where nobody is glad to see us, 
or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill paid) whether we 
come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about us. 
We all know this hotel, where we have no individuality, 
but put oursBlves into the general post, as it were, and 


64 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


are sorted and disposed of according to our division. 
We all know that we can get on very well indeed at such 
a place, but still not perfectly well ; and this may be be- 
cause the place is largely wholesale, and there is a linger- 
ing personal retail interest within us that asks to be sat- 
isfied. 

To sum up. My uncommercial travelling has not yet 
brought me to the conclusion that we are close to perfec- 
tion in these matters. And just as I do not believe that 
the end of the world will ever be near at hand, so long 
as any of the very tiresome and arrogant people who 
constantly predict that catastrophe are left in it, so I 
shall have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while any 
of the uncomfortable superstitions I have glanced at re- 
main in existence. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


66 


VII. 


TRAVELLING ABROAD. 

I GOT into the travelling-chariot, — it was of German 
make, roomy, heavy, and unvarnished, — I got into the 
travelling-chariot, pulled up the steps after me, shut my- 
self in with a smart bang of the door, and gave the word. 

Go on I 

Immediately all that W. and S. W. division of London 
began to slide away at a pace so lively that I was over 
the river, and past the Old Kent Road, and out on Black- 
heath, and even ascending Shooter’s Hill, before I had 
had time to look about me in the carriage, like a collected 
traveller. 

I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted 
storage for luggage in front, and other up behind ; I had 
a net for books overhead, great pockets to all the win- 
dows, a leathern pouch or two hung up for odds and ends, 
and a reading-lamp fixed in the back of the chariot, in 
case I should be benighted. I was amply provided in 
all respects, and had no idea where I was going (which 
was delightful), except that I was going abroad. 

So smooth was the old high-road, and so fresh were 
the horses, and so fast went I, that it was midway be- 
tween Gravesend and Rochester, and the widening river 
was bearing the ships, white-sailed or black-smoked, out 
to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small 
boy. 

Halloa I ” said I, to the very queer small boy, 
** where do you live ? ” 

“ At Chatham,” says he. 

What do you do there ? ” saj^s I. 

I go to school,” says he. 

I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Pres- 
ently the very queer small boy says, This is Gadshill 
5 


66 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those 
travellers, and ran away.^^ 

You know something about Falstaff, eh ? ’’’ said I. 

All about him,’^ said the very queer small boy. I 
am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But 
do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house 
there, if you please 1 

‘‘You admire that house ? said I. 

“ Bless you, sir,^^ said the very queer small boy, 
“ when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used 
to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And 
now I am nine I come by myself to look at it. And ever 
since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, 
has often said to me, ‘ If you were to be very persever- 
ing, and were to work hard, you might some day come to 
live in it.^ Though that ’s impossible ! said the very 
queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring 
at the house out of window With all his might. 

I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer 
small boy ; for that house happens to be my house, and I 
have reason to believe that what he said was true. 

Well I I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the 
very queer small boy and went on. Over the road where 
the old Romans used to march, over the road where the 
old Canterbury pilgrims used to go, over the road where the 
travelling trains of the old imperious priests and princes 
used to jingle on horseback between the continent and this 
Island through the mud and water, over the road where 
Shakespeare hummed to himself, “ Blow, blow, thou win- 
ter wind,^^ as he sat in the saddle at the gate of the 
inn-yard noticing the carriers ; all among the cherry or- 
chards, apple orchards, cornfields, and hop-gardens ; so 
went I, by Canterbury to Dover. There the sea was 
tumbling in, with deep sounds, after dark, and the revolv- 
ing French light on Cape Grinez was seen regularly burst- 
ing out and becoming obscured, as if the head of a gigantic 
light-keeper in an anxious state of mind were interposed 
every half-minute, to look how it was burning. 

Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam- 
packet, and we were aiming at the bar in the usual 
intolerable manner, and the bar was aiming at us in the 
usual intolerable manner, and the bar got by far the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


67 


best of it, and we got by far the worst, — all in the usual 
intolerable manner. 

But when I was clear of the Custom House on the other 
side, and when I began to make the dust fly on the thirsty 
French roads, and when the twigsome trees by the wayside 
(which, I suppose, never will grow leafy, for they never 
did) guarded here and there a dusty soldier, or field-laborer, 
baking on a heap of broken stones, sound asleep in a fic- 
tion of shade, I began to recover my travelling spirits. 
Coming upon the breaker of the broken stones, in a hard, 
hot, shining hat, on which the sun played at a distance as 
on a burning-glass, I felt that now indeed I was in the 
dear old France of my affections. I should have known 
it, without the well-remembered bottle of rough ordinary 
wine, the cold roast fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of salt, 
on which I lunched with unspeakable satisfaction from 
one of the stuffed pockets of the chariot. 

I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a bright 
face looked in at the window, I started and said : — 

“ Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead I ’’ 

My cheerful servant laughed, and answered, — 

Me ? Not at all, sir.’ ^ 

'' How glad I am to wake ! What are we doing, 
Louis ? ” 

We go to take relay of horses. Will you walk up the 
hill ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

Welcome the old French hill, with the old French luna- 
tic (not in the most distant degree related to Sterne’s Ma- 
ria) living in a thatched dog-kennel half-way up, and 
flying out with his crutch and his big head and. extended 
nightcap to be beforehand with the old men and women 
exhibiting crippled children, and with the children exhib- 
iting old men and women, ugly and blind, who always 
seemed by resurrectionary process to be recalled out of 
the elements for the sudden peopling of the solitude I 

‘‘ It is well,” said I, scattering among them what small 
coin I had ; here comes Louis, and I am quite roused 
from my nap.” 

We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new as- 
surance that France stood where I had left it. There were 
the posting-houses, with their archways, dirty stable-yards 


68 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


and clean postmasters’ wives, bright women of business, 
looking on at the putting-to of the horses ; there were the 
postilions counting what money they got into their hats, 
and never making enough of it ; there were the standard 
population of gray horses of Flanders descent, invariably 
biting one another when they got a chance ; there were 
the fleecy sheepskins, looped on over their uniforms by 
the postilions, like bibbed aprons, when it blew and 
rained ; there were their jack-boots, and their cracking 
whips ; there were the cathedrals that I got out to see, 
as under some cruel bondage, in no wise desiring to see 
them ; there were the little towns that appeared to have 
no reason for being towns, since most of their houses 
were to let, and nobody could be induced to look at them 
except the people who could n’t let them, and had noth- 
ing else to do but look at them all day. I lay a night 
upon the road, and enjoyed delectable cookery of pota- 
toes,. and some other sensible things, adoption of which at 
home would inevitably be shown to be fraught with ruin, 
somehow or other, to that rickety national blessing, the 
British farmer ; and at last I was rattled, like a single 
pill in a box, over leagues of stones, until — madly crack- 
ing, plunging, and flourishing two gray tails about — I 
made my triumphal entry into Paris. 

At Paris I took an upper apartment for a few days in 
one of the hotels of the Eue de Eivoli ; my front windows 
looking into the garden of the Tuileries (where the prin- 
cipal difierence between the nurse-maids and the flowers 
seemed to be that the former were locomotive and the 
latter not) ; my back windows looking at all the other 
back windows in the hotel, and deep down into a paved 
yard, where my German chariot had retired under a tight- 
fitting archway, to all appearance, for life, and where 
bells rang all day without anybody’s minding them but 
certain chamberlains with feather brooms and green baize 
caps, who here and there leaned out of some high window 
placidly looking down, and where neat waiters with trays 
on their left shoulders passed and repassed from morning 
to night. 

Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible 
force into the Morgue. I never want to go there, but am 
always pulled there. One Christmas day, when I would 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


69 


rather have been anywhere else, I was attracted in to see 
an old gray man lying all alone on his cold bed, with a 
tap of water turned on over his gray hair, and running, 
drip, drip, drip, down his wretched face until it got to 
the corner of his mouth, where it took a turn, and made 
him look sly. One New Year’s morning (by the same 
token, the sun was shining outside, and there was a 
mountebank, balancing a feather on his nose, within a 
y ard of the gate), I was pulled in again to look at a flax- 
en-haired boy of eighteen with a heart hanging on his 
breast, — From his mother,” was engraven on it, — who 
had come into the net across the river, with a bullet- 
wound in his fair forehead, and his hands cut with a 
knife, but whence or how was a blank mystery. This 
time I was forced into the same dread place to see a 
large dark man whose disfigurement by water was in a 
frightful manner comic, and whose expression was that 
of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a heavy 
blow, but was going immediately to open them, shake his 
head, and come up smiling.” 0, what this large dark 
man cost me in that bright city ! 

It was very hot weather, and he was none the better 
for that, and I was much the worse. Indeed, a very 
neat and pleasant little woman, with the key of her lodg- 
ing on her forefinger, who had been showing him to her 
little girl, while she and the child ate sweetmeats, ob- 
served monsieur looking poorly as we came out together, 
and asked monsieur, with her wondering little eyebrows 
prettily raised, if there were anything the matter. Faintly 
replying in the negative, monsieur crossed the road to a 
wine-shop, got some brandy, and resolved to freshen 
himself with a dip in the great floating bath on the 
river. 

The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner by a 
male population in striped drawers of various gay colors, 
who walked up and down arm in arm, drank coffee, 
smoked cigars, sat at little tables, conversed politely with 
the damsels who dispensed the towels, and every now 
and then pitched themselves into the river head-foremost, 
and came out again to repeat this social routine. ^ I made 
haste to participate in the water part of the entertainments, 
and was in the full enjoyment of a delightful bath, when 


70 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


all in a moment I was seized with an unreasonable idea 
that the large dark body was floating straight at me. 

I was out of the river and dressing instantly. In the 
shock I had taken some water into my mouth, and it 
turned me sick, for I fancied that the contamination of the 
creature was in it. I had got back to my cool darkened 
room in the hotel, and was lying on a sofa there, before I 
began to reason with myself. 

Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark 
creature was stone dead, and that I should no more come 
upon him out of the place where I had seen him dead 
than I should come upon the cathedral of Notre Dame in 
an entirely new situation. What troubled me was the 
picture of the creature ; and that had so curiously and 
strongly painted itself upon my brain, that I could not 
get rid of it until it was worn out. 

I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it 
was a real discomfort to me. That very day, at dinner, 
some morsel on my plate looked like a piece of him, and 
T was glad to get up and go out. Later in the evening, 
I was walking along the Rue St. Honore, when I saw a 
bill at a public room there, announcing small-sword exer- 
cise, broadsword exercise, wrestling, and other such 
feats. I went in, and, some of the sword play being 
very skilful, remained. A specimen of our own national 
sport. The British Boaxe, was announced to be given at 
the close of the evening. In an evil hour I determined 
to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton. It was a 
clumsy specimen (executed by two English grooms out 
of place), but one of the combatants, receiving a straight 
right-hander with the glove between his eyes, did exactly 
what the large dark creature in the Morgue had seemed 
going to do, — and finished me for that night. 

There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual 
fragrance in Paris) in the little anteroom of my apart- 
ment at the hotel. The large dark creature in the Morgue 
was by no direct experience associated with my sense of 
smell, because, when I came to the knowledge of him, 
he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass as good as a 
wall of steel or marble, for that matter. Yet the whiff 
of the room never failed to reproduce him. What was 
more curious was the capriciousness with which his por- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


71 


trait seemed to light itself up in my mind elsewhere. I 
might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the 
shop windows, and might be regaling myself with one of 
the ready-made clothes shops that are set out there. My 
eyes, wandering over impossible-waisted dressing-gowns 
and luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or 
the shopman, or even the very dummy at the door, and 
would suggest to me, “ Something like him I — and in- 
stantly I was sickened again. 

This would happen at the theatre in the same manner. 
Often it would happen in the street, when I certainly was 
not looking for the likeness, and when probably there 
was no likeness there. It was not because the creature 
was dead that I was so haunted, because I know that I 
might have been (and I know it because I have been) 
equally attended by the image of a living aversion. This 
lasted about a week. The picture did not fade by de- 
grees, in the sense that it became a whit less forcible 
and distinct, but in the sense that it obtruded itself less 
and less frequently. The experience may be worth con- 
sidering by some who have the care of children. It 
would be difiScult to overstate the intensity and accuracy 
of an intelligent child^s observation. At that impressible 
time of life, it must sometimes produce a fixed impres- 
sion. If the fixed impression be of an object terrible to 
the child, it will be (for want of reasoning upon) insep- 
arable from great fear. Force the child at such a time, be 
Spartan with it, send it into the dark against its will, 
leave it in a lonely bedroom against its will, and you had 
better murder it. 

On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris in the 
German chariot, and left the large dark creature behind 
me for good. I ought to confess, though, that I had been 
drawn back to the Morgue, after he was put underground, 
to look at his clothes, and that I found them frightfully 
like him, — particularly his boots. However, I rattled 
away for Switzerland, looking forward and not backward, 
and so we parted company. 

Welcome again the long, long spell of France, with 
the queer country inns, full of vases of fiowers and clocks, 
in the dull little towns, and with the little population not 
at all dull on the little Boulevard in the evening, under 


72 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


the little trees ! Welcome, Monsieur the Cur^, walking 
alone in the early morning a short way out of the town, 
reading that eternal Breviary of yours, which surely 
might be almost read without book by this time 1 Wel- 
come, Monsieur the Curd, later in the day, jolting through 
the highway dust (as if you had already ascended to the 
cloudy region), in a very big-headed cabriolet, with the 
dried mud of a dozen winters on it. Welcome again. 
Monsieur the Cure, as we exchange salutations ; you, 
straightening your back to look at the German chariot, 
while picking in your little village garden a vegetable or 
two for the day’s soup : I, looking out of the German 
chariot window in that delicious traveller’s trance which 
knows no cares, no yesterdays, no to-morrows, nothing but 
the passing objects and the passing scents and sounds I 
And so I came, in due course of delight, to Strasburg, 
where I passed a wet Sunday evening at a window, while 
an idle trifle of a vaudeville was played for me at the 
opposite house. 

How such a large house came to have only three peo- 
ple living in it, was its own affair. There were at least 
a score of windows in its high roof alone ; how many in 
its grotesque front, I soon gave up counting. The owner 
was a shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim ; by trade — 
t could n’t make out what by trade, for he had forborne 
to write that up, and his shop was shut. 

At flrst, as I looked at Straudenheim’s, through the 
steadily falling rain, I set him up in business in the 
goose-liver line. But inspection of Straudenheim, who be- 
came visible at a window on the second floor, convinced 
me that there was something more precious than liver in 
the case. He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked 
usurious and rich. A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, 
with white hair and keen eyes, though near-sighted. He 
was writing at a desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and 
again left off writing, put his pen in his mouth, and went 
through actions with his right hand, like a man steadying 
piles of cash. Five-franc pieces, Straudenheim, or golden 
Napoleons? A jeweller, Straudenheim, a dealer in mon- 
ey, a diamond merchant, or what ? 

Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, sat 
his housekeeper, — far from young, but of a comely pres- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


73 


ence, suggestive of a well-matured foot and ankle. She 
was cheerily dressed, had a fan in her hand, and wore 
large gold ear-rings and a large gold cross. She would 
have been out holiday-making (as I settled it) but for the 
pestilent rain. Strasburg had given up holiday-making 
for that once as a bad job, because the rain was jerking 
in gushes out of the old roof-spouts, and running in a 
brook down the middle of the street. The housekeeper, 
her arms folded on her bosom, and her fan tapping her 
chin, was bright and smiling at her open window, but 
otherwise Straudenheim^s house-front was very dreary. 
The housekeeper's was the only open window in it ; 
Straudenheim kept himself close, though it was a sultry 
evening when air is pleasant, and though the rain had 
brought into the town that vague, refreshing smell of 
grass which rain does bring in the summer-time. 

The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim’ s shoul- 
der inspired me with a misgiving that somebody had 
come to murder that flourishing merchant for the wealth 
with which I had handsomely endowed him ; the rather 
as it was an excited man, lean and long of flgure, and 
evidently stealthy of foot. But he conferred with Strau- 
denheim, instead of doing liim a mortal injury, and then 
they both softly opened the other window of that room, 
— which was immediately over the housekeeper’s, — and 
tried to see her by looking down. And my opinion of 
Straudenheim was much lowered when I saw that emi- 
nent citizen spit out of window, clearly with the hope of 
spitting on the housekeeper. 

The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her 
head, and laughed. Though unconscious of Strauden- 
heim, she was conscious of somebody else, — of me ? — 
there was nobody else. 

After leaning so far out of window, that I confidently 
expected to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the 
lean man drew their heads in and shut the window 
Presently the house door secretly opened, and they 
slowly and spitefully crept forth into the pouring rain. 
They were coming over to me (I thought) to demand sat- 
isfaction for my looking at the housekeeper, when they 
plunged into a recess in the architecture under my win- 
dow, and dragged out the puniest of little soldiers, begirt 


74 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


with the most innocent of little swords. The tall, glazed 
head-dress of this warrior Straudenheim instantly knocked 
off, and out of it fell two sugar-sticks and three or four 
large lumps of sugar. 

The warrior made no effort to recover his property or 
to pick up his shako, but looked with an expression of 
attention at Straudenheim when he kicked him five times, 
and also at the lean man when he kicked him five times, 
and again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast of his 
(the warrior’s) little coat open, and shook all his ten fin- 
gers in his face, as if they were ten thousand. When 
these outrages had been committed, Straudenheim and his 
man went into the house again, and barred the door. A 
wonderful circumstance was, that the housekeeper, who 
saw it all (and who could have taken six such warriors 
to her buxom bosom at once), only fanned herself, and 
laughed as she had laughed before, and seemed to have 
no opinion about it, one way or other. 

But the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable 
vengeance taken by the little warrior. Left alone in the 
rain, he picked up his shako ; put it on, all wet and dirty 
as it was ; retired into a court of which Straudenheim’ s 
house formed the corner ; wheeled about ; and, bringing 
his two forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed 
them over one another, crosswise, in derision, defiance, 
and contempt of Straudenheim. Although Straudenheim 
could not possibly be supposed to be conscious of this 
strange proceeding, it so inflated and comforted the little 
warrior’s soul, that twice he went away, and twice came 
back into the court to repeat it, as though it must goad his 
enemy to. madness. Not only that, but he afterwards 
came back with two other small warriors, and they all 
three did it together. Not only that, — as I live to tell 
the tale I — but, just as it was falling quite dark, the 
three came back, bringing with them a huge bearded Sap- 
per, whom they moved by recital of the original wrong to 
go through the same performance, with the same com- 
plete absence of all possible knowledge of it on the part 
of Straudenheim. And then they all went away, arm in 
arm, singing. 

I went away, too, in the German chariot, at sunrise; 
and rattled on, day after day, like one in a sweet dream ; 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 


76 


with so many clear little bells on the harness of the horses, 
that the nursery rhyme about Banbury Cross and the 
venerable lady who rode in state there was always in my 
ears. And now I came to the land of wooden houses, 
innocent cakes, thin butter soup, and spotless little inn 
bedrooms with a family likeness to Dairies. And now 
the Swiss marksmen were forever rifle-shooting at marks 
across gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that I felt 
like a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and went in 
highly deserved danger of my tyrannical life. The prizes 
at these shootings were watches, smart handkerchiefs, 
hats, spoons, and (above all) tea-trays ; and at these con- 
tests I came upon a more than usually accomplished and 
amiable countryman of my own, who had shot himself 
deaf in whole years of competition, and had won so many 
tea-trays that he went about the country with his carriage 
full of them, like a glorified Cheap- Jack. 

In the mountain country into which I had now trav- 
elled, a yoke of oxen were sometimes hooked on before 
the post-horses, and I went lumbering up, up, up, through 
mist and rain, with the roar of falling water for change of 
music. Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear away, 
and I would come down into picturesque little towns with 
gleaming spires and odd towers ; and would stroll afoot 
into market-places in steep-winding streets, where a hun- 
dred women in bodices sold eggs and honey, butter and 
fruit, and suckled their children as they sat by their clean 
baskets, and had such enormous goitres (or glandular 
swellings in the throat) that it became a science to know 
where the nurse ended and the child began. About this 
time I deserted my German chariot for the back of a mule 
(in color and consistency so very like a dusty old hair 
trunk I once had at school, that I half expected to see my 
initials in brass-headed nails on his backbone), and went 
up a thousand rugged ways, and looked down at a thou- 
sand woods of fir and pine, and would on the whole have 
preferred my mule^s keeping a little nearer to the inside, 
and not usually travelling with a hoof or two over the 
precipice, — though much consoled by explanation that 
this was to be attributed to his great sagacity, by reason 
of his carrying broad loads of wood at other times, and 
not being clear but that I myself belonged to that station 


76 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


of life, and required as much room as they. He brought 
me sai'ely, in his own wise way, among the passes of the 
Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates a day ; being 
now (like Don Quixote on the back of the wooden horse) 
in the region of wind, now in the region of fire, now in the 
region of unmelting ice and snow. Here I passed over 
trembling domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was 
roaring ; and here was received under arches of icicles, 
of unspeakable beauty ; and here the sweet air was so 
bracing and so light, that at halting-times I rolled in the 
snow when I saw my mule do it, thinking that he must 
know best. At this part of the journey we would come, 
at midday, into half an hour’s thaw, when the rough 
mountain inn would be found on an island of deep mud 
in a sea of snow, while the baiting strings of mules, and 
the carts full of casks and bales, which had been in 
an Arctic condition a mile oif, would steam again. By 
such ways and means I would come to the cluster of 
chalets where I had to turn out of the track to see the 
waterfall ; and then, uttering a howl like a young giant, 
on espying a traveller — in other words something to eat 
— coming up the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile, 
who sunned himself and nursed his goitre, would rouse 
the woman-guide within the hut, who would stream out 
hastily, throwing her child over one of her shoulders and 
her goitre over the other, as she came along. I slept at 
religious houses, and bleak refuges of many kinds, on this 
journey ; and by the stove at night heard stories of trav- 
ellers who had perished, within call, in wreaths and drifts 
of snow. One night the stove within, and the cold out- 
side, awakened childish associations long forgotten ; and 
I dreamed I was in Russia, — the identical serf out of a 
picture-book I had before I could read it for myself, — 
and that I was going to be knouted by a noble personage 
in a fur cap, boots, and ear-rings, who, I think, must have 
come out of some melodrama. 

Commend me to the beautiful waters among these moun- 
tains I Though I was not of their mind, they being in- 
veterately bent on getting down into the level country, 
and I ardently desiring to linger where I was. What 
desperate leaps they took I what dark abysses they plunged 
into I what rocks they wore away 1 what echoes they in- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


77 


yoked ) In one part where I went they were pressed into 
the service of carrying wood down to be burnt next win- 
ter, as costly fuel, in Italy. But their fierce, savage na- 
ture was not to be easily constrained, and they fought 
with every limb of the wood ; whirling it round and 
round, stripping its bark away, dashing it against pointed 
comers, driving it out of the course, and roaring and fly- 
ing at the peasants who steered it back again from the 
bank with long stout poles. Alas ! concurrent streams 
of time and water carried me down fast, and I came, on 
an exquisitely clear day, to the Lausanne shore of the 
Lake of Geneva, where I stood looking at the bright blue 
water, the flushed white mountains opposite, and the boats 
at my feet with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing 
like enormous magnifications of this goose-quill pen that 
is now in my hand. 

— The sky became overcast without any notice ; a 
wind very like the March east wind of England blew 
across me ; and a voice said, “ How do you like it ? Will 
it do ? 

I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a Ger- 
man travelling-chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage 
Department of the London Pantechnicon. I had a com- 
mission to buy it for a friend who was going abroad ; and 
the look and manner of the chariot, as I tried the cushions 
and the springs, brought all these hints of travelling 
remembrance before me. 

It will do very well/^said I, rather sorrowfully, as I 
got out at the other door, and shut the carriage up. 


7 & 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


VIII. 

THE GREAT TASMANIA’S CARGO. 

I TRAVEL constantly up and down a certain line of rail- 
way that has a terminus in London. It is the railway for 
a large military depot, and for other large barracks. To 
the best of my serious belief, I have never been on that 
railway by daylight without seeing some handcuffed de- 
serters in the train. 

It is in the nature of things that such an institution as 
our English army should have many bad and troublesome 
characters in it. But this is a reason for, and not against, 
its being made as acceptable as possible to well-disposed 
men of decent behavior. Such men are assuredly not 
tempted into the ranks by the beastly inversion of natural 
laws, and the compulsion to live in worse than swinish 
foulness. Accordingly, when any such Circumlocutional 
embellishments of the soldier’s condition have of late been 
brought to notice, we civilians, seated in outer darkness 
cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax, have considered 
the matter as being our business, and have shown a ten- 
dency to declare that we would rather not have it misreg- 
ulated, if such declaration may, without violence to the 
Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are put in 
authority over us. 

Any animated description of a modern battle, any pri- 
vate soldier’s letter published in the newspapers, any page 
of the records of the Victoria Cross, will show that in the 
ranks of the army there exists, under all disadvantages, as 
fine a sense of duty as is to be found in any station on 
earth. Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faith- 
fully as the soldier does his, this world would be a better 
place ? There may be greater difficulties in our way 
than in the soldier’s. Not disputed. But let us at least 
do our duty towards him. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


79 


I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port 
where I had looked after Mercantile Jack, and I was walk* 
ing up a hill there, on a wild March morning. My conver* 
sation with my oiBScial friend Pangloss, by whom I was 
accidentally accompanied, took this direction as we took 
the uphill direction, because the object of my uncom- 
mercial journey was to see some discharged soldiers who 
had recently come home from India. There were men of 
Havelock^s among them ; there were men who had been 
in many of the great battles of the great Indian campaign 
among them ; and I was curious to note what our dis- 
charged soldiers looked like, when they were done with. 

I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my 
official friend Pangloss) because these men had claimed 
to be discharged when their right to be discharged was 
not admitted. They had behaved with unblemished fidel- 
ity and bravery ; but a change of circumstances had 
arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to theii 
compact, and entitled them to enter on a new one. Their 
demand had been blunderingly resisted by the authorities 
in India ; but it is to be presumed that the men were not 
far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle had ended in their 
being sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders from 
home. (There was an immense waste of money, of 
course.) 

Under these circumstances, — thought I, as I walked 
up the hill, on which I accidentally encountered my offi- 
cial friend, — under these circumstances of the men hav- 
ing successfully opposed themselves to the Pagoda De- 
partment of that great Circumlocution Office on which the 
sun never sets and the light of reason never rises, the 
Pagoda Department will have been particularly careful of 
the national honor. It will have shown these men, in the 
scrupulous good faith, not to say the generosity, of its 
dealing with them, that great national authorities can 
have no small retaliations and revenges. It will have 
made every provision for their health on the passage 
home, and will have landed them, restored from their 
campaigning fatigues by a sea-voyage, pure air, sound 
food, and good medicines. And I pleased myself with 
dwelling beforehand on the great' accounts of their per- 
sonal treatment which these men would carry into their 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


various towns and villages, and on the increasing popu- 
larity of the service that would insensibly follow. 1 
almost began to hope that the hitherto never-failing de- 
serters on my railroad would by and by become a phe- 
nomenon. 

In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the work- 
house of Liverpool. — For the cultivation of laurels in a 
sandy soil had brought the soldiers in question to that 
abode of Glory. 

Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired 
how they had made their triumphant entry there. They 
had been brought through the rain in carts, it seemed, 
from the landing-place to the gate, and had then been 
carried up stairs on the backs of paupers. Their groans 
and pains during the performance of this glorious pageant 
had been so distressing as to bring tears into the eyes of 
spectators but too well accustomed to scenes of suffering. 
The men were so dreadfully cold that those who could 
get near the fires were hard to be restrained from thrust- 
ing their feet in among the blazing coals. They were so 
horribly reduced that they were awful to look upon. 
Backed with dysentery and blackened with scurvy, one 
hundred and forty wretched soldiers had been revived 
with brandy and laid in bed. 

My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from 
a learned doctor of that name, who was once tutor to 
Candide, an ingenious young gentleman of some celeb- 
rity. In his personal character he is as humane and 
worthy a gentleman as any I know ; in his official capa- 
city he unfortunately preaches the doctrines of his re- 
nowned ancestor by demonstrating, on all occasions, that 
we live in the best of all possible official worlds. 

'' In the name of humanity,’^ said I, “ how did the men 
fall into this deplorable state ? Was the ship well found 
in stores ? 

'‘I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact of 
my own knowledge,^^ answered Pangloss ; “ but I have 
grounds for asserting that the stores were the best of all 
possible stores.’^ 

A medical officer laid before us a handful of rotten 
biscuit, and a handful of split peas. The biscuit was a 
honeycombed heap of maggots, and the excrement of 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


81 


maggots. The peas were even harder than this filth. 
A similar handful had been experimentally boiled six 
hours, and had shown no signs of softening. These were 
the stores on which the soldiers had been fed. 

'' The beef — I began, when Pangloss cut me short. 

“ Was the best of all possible beef,^^ said he. 

But behold, there was laid before us certain evidence 
given at the Coroner’s Inquest, holden on some of the 
men (who had obstinately died of their treatment), and 
from that evidence it appeared that the beef was the 
worst of all possible beef I 

"'Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my 
stand,” said Pangloss, '' by the pork, which was the best 
of all possible pork.” 

But look at this food before Our eyes, if one may so 
misuse the word,” said I. ‘‘ Would any Inspector who 
did his duty pass such abomination ? ” 

It ought not to have been passed,” Pangloss ad- 
mitted. 

^‘Then the authorities out there — ” I began, when 
Pangloss cut me short again. 

There would certainly seem to have been something 
wrong somewhere,” said he ; “ but I am prepared to 
prove that the authorities out there are the best of all 
possible authorities.” 

I never heard of any impeached public authority, in my 
life, who was not the best public authority in existence. 

We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low 
by scurvy,” said I. “ Since lime-juice has been regular- 
ly stored and served out in our navy, surely that disease, 
which used to devastate it, has almost disappeared ? 
Was there lime-juice aboard this transport ? ” 

My official friend was beginning, “ The best of all pos- 
sible — ” when an inconvenient medical forefinger pointed 
out another passage in the evidence, from which it ap- 
peared that the lime-juice had been bad too. Not to men- 
tion that the vinegar had been bad too, the vegetables 
bad too, the cooking accommodation insufficient (if there 
had been anything worth mentioning to cook), the water 
supply exceedingly inadequate, and the beer sour. 

Then the men,” said Pangloss, a little irritated, 
** were the worst of all possible men.” 

6 


82 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


In what respect V’ 1 asked. 

“ 0, habitual drunkards/^ said Pangloss. 

But again the same incorrigible medical forefinger 
pointed out another passage in the evidence, showing 
that the dead men had been examined after death, and 
that they, at least, could not possibly have been habitual 
drunkards, because the organs within them which must 
have shown traces of that habit were perfectly sound. 

''And besides, said the three doctors present, one 
and all, " habitual drunkards, brought as low as tliese 
men have been, could not recover under care and food, 
as the great majority of these men are recovering. They 
would not have strength of constitution to do it.^^ 

" Keckless and improvident dogs, then,^^ said Pan- 
gloss. " Always are, — nine times out of ten.^^ 

I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked 
him whether the men had any money. 

" Money ? said he. "I have in my iron safe nearly 
four hundred pounds of theirs ; the agents have nearly 
a hundred pounds more ; and many of them have left 
money in Indian banks besides. 

" Hah ! said I to myself, as we went up stairs, " this 
is not the best of all possible stories, I doubt ! 

We went into a large ward containing some twenty or 
five-and-twenty beds. We went into several such wards, 
one after another. I find it very difficult to indicate what 
a shocking sight I saw in them without frightening the 
reader from the perusal of these lines, and defeating my 
object of making it known. 

0 the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked be- 
tween the rows of beds, or — worse still — that glazedly 
looked at the white ceiling, and saw nothing and cared 
for nothing I Here lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly 
covered with a thin, unwholesome skin, that not a bone 
in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp the arm 
above the elbow in my finger and thumb. Here lay a 
man with the black scurvy eating his legs away, his gums 
gone, and his teeth all gaunt and bare. This bed was 
empty because gangrene had set in, and the patient had 
died but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless one, be- 
cause its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be 
roused to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


pillow, with a feeble moan. The awful thinness of the 
fallen cheeks, the awful brightness of the deep-set ej’es, 
the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the recumbent hu- 
man images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of 
solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had died 
aboard the ship and were lying at the bottom of the sea, 
0 Pangloss, God forgive you ! 

In one bed lay a man whose life had been saved (as it 
was hoped) by deep incisions in the feet and legs. 
While I was speaking to him, a nurse came up to change 
the poultices which this operation had rendered necessary, 
and I had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to turn 
away merely to spare myself. He was sorely wasted and 
keenly susceptible, but the efforts he made to subdue any 
expression of impatience or suffering were quite heroic. 
It was easy to see in the shrinking of the figure, and the 
drawing of the bedclothes over the head, how acute the 
endurance was, and it made me shrink too, as if I were 
in pain ; but when the new bandages were on, and the 
poor feet were composed again, he made an apology for 
himself (though he had not uttered a word), and said, 
plaintively, “ I am so tender and weak, you see, sir ! ’’ 
Neither from him, nor from any one sufferer of the whole 
ghastly number, did I hear a complaint. Of thankfulness 
for present solicitude and care, I heard much ; of com- 
plaint, not a word. 

I think I could have recognized in the dismallest skel- 
eton there the ghost of a soldier. Something of the old 
air was still latent in the palest shadow of life I talked 
to. One emaciated creature, in the strictest literality 
worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back, looking so 
like death that I asked one of the doctors if he were not 
dying, or dead. A few kind words from the Doctor in 
his ear, and he opened his eyes, and smiled, — looked, 
in a moment, as if he would have made a salute, if he 
could. “ We shall pull him through, please God,^^ said 
the Doctor. “ Plase God, surr, and thankye,^^ said the 
patient. '‘You are much better to-day, — are you not ? 
said the Doctor. " Plase God, surr ; ^t is the slape I 
want, surr ; His my breathin^ makes the nights so long.’^ 
" He is a careful fellow this, you must know,^^ said the 
Doctor, cheerfully ; "it was raining hard when they put 


84 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


him in the open cart to bring him here, and he had the 
presence of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of 
his pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged. Prob* 
ably it saved his life.^^ The patient rattled out the skel- 
eton of a laugh, and said, proud of the story, “ ^Deed, 
surr, an open cairt was a comical means o^ bringin^ a 
dyin^ man here, and a clever way to kill him.!^ You 
might have sworn to him for a soldier when he said it. 

One thing had perplexed me very much in going from 
bed to bed, — a very significant and cruel thing. I could 
find no young inan but one. He had attracted my notice 
by having got up and dressed himself in his soldier’s 
jacket and trousers, with the intention of sitting by the 
fire ; but he had found himself too weak, and had crept 
back to his bed, and laid himself down on the outside of it. 
I could have pronounced him, alone, to be a young man 
aged by famine and sickness. As we were standing 
by the Irish soldier’s bed, I mentioned my perplexity to 
the Doctor. He took a board with an inscription on it 
from the head of the Irishman’s bed, and asked me what 
age I supposed that man to be. I had observed him with 
attention while talking to him, and answered confidently. 

Fifty.” The Doctor, with a pitying glance at the pa- 
tient, who had dropped into a stupor again, put the board 
back, and said. “Twenty-four.” 

All the arrangements of the wards were excellent. 
They could not have been more humane, sympathizing, 
gentle, attentive, or wholesome. The owners of the ship, 
too, had done all they could liberally. There were 
bright fires in every room, and the convalescent men were 
sitting round them, reading various papers and periodicals. 
I took the liberty of inviting my official friend Pangloss 
to look at those convalescent men, and to tell me whether 
their faces and bearing were or were not generally the 
faces and bearing of steady, respectable soldiers. The 
master of the workhouse, overhearing me, said he had had 
a pretty large experience of troops, and that better con- 
ducted men than these he had never had to do with. 
They were always (he added) as we saw them. And of 
us visitors (I add) they knew nothing whatever except 
that we were there. 

It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


8b 


Pangloss. Prefacing it with the observation that, of 
course, I knew beforehand that there was not the faintest 
desire anywhere to hush up any part of this dreadful 
business, and that the Inquest was the fairest of all 
possible Inquests, I besought four things of Pangloss. 
Firstly, to observe that the Inquest was not held in that 
place, but at some distance off. Secondly, to look round 
upon those helpless spectres in their beds. Thirdly, to 
remember that the witnesses produced from among them 
before that Inquest could not have been selected because 
they were the men who had the most to tell it, but because 
they happened to be in a state admitting of their safe re- 
moval. Fourthly, to say whether the coroner and jury 
could have come there, to those pillows, and taken a little 
evidence. My official friend declined to commit himself 
to a reply. 

There was a sergeant reading in one of the fireside 
groups. As he was a man of very intelligent countenance, 
and as I have a great respect for non-commissioned offi- 
cers as a class, I sat down on the nearest bed to have some 
talk with him. (It was the bed of one of the grisliest of 
the poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.) 

“ I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the 
Inquest, sergeant, that he never saw men behave better 
on board ship than these men.^^ 

They did behave very well, sir.^^ 

I was glad to see, too, that every man had a ham- 
mock. 

The sergeant gravely shook his head. 

“ There must be some mistake, sir. The men of my 
own mess had no hammocks. There were not hammocks 
enough on board, and the men of the two next messes 
laid hold of hammocks for themselves as soon as they got 
on board, and squeezed my men out, as I may say.^^ 

Had the squeezed-out men none, then ? 

‘‘ None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used 
by other men who wanted hammocks ; but many men had 
none at all. 

“ Then you don^t agree with the evidence on that 
point ? 

Certainly not, sir. A man can^t, when he kn')ws to 
the contrary. 


86 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


** Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink ? 

There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men 
were under the impression — I knew it for a fact at the 
time — that it was not allowed to take blankets or bed- 
ding on board, and so men who had things of that sort 
came to sell them purposely.^’ 

“ Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink ? 

“ They did, sir.^^ (I believe there never was a more 
truthful witness than the sergeant. He had no inclina- 
tion to make out a case.) 

“ Many ? 

“ Some, sir ’’ (considering the question). “ Soldier- 
like. They had been long marching in the rainy season, 
by bad roads, — no roads at all, in short, — and when they 
got to Calcutta, men turned to and drank before taking a 
last look at it. Soldier-like.^^ 

“ Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who 
sold clothes for drink at that time ? 

The sergeant’s wan eye, happily just beginning to 
rekindle with health, travelled round the place, and came 
back to me. Certainly, sir.” 

The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must 
have been severe ? ” 

“ It was very severe, sir.” 

“ Yet, what with the rest and the sea air, I should 
have thought that the men (even the men who got drunk) 
would have soon begun to recover on board ship ? ” 

“ So they might ; but the bad food told upon them, and 
when we got into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, 
and the men dropped.” 

The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am 
told, sergeant ? ” 

Have you seen the food, sir ? ” 

“ Some of it.” 

“ Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir ? ” 

If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, 
had spoken the amount of this volume, he could not have 
settled that question better. I believe the sick could as 
soon have eaten the ship as the ship’s provisions. 

I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss,, 
when I had left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking 
Pangloss whether he had ever heard of biscuit getting 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


87 


drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities for putrefac- 
tion and vermin ; of peas becoming hardened in liquor ; 
of hammocks drinking themselves off the face of the 
earth ; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking-accom- 
modation, water supply, and beer, all taking to drinking 
together and going to ruin. '' If not, (I asked him), what 
did he say in defence of the officers condemned by the 
Coroner^ s Jury, who, by signing the General Inspection 
report relative to the ship Great Tasmania chartered for 
these troops, had deliberately asserted all that bad and 
poisonous dunghill refuse to be good and wholesome 
food ? My official friend replied, that it was a remark- 
able fact, that whereas some officers were only positively 
good, and other officers only comparatively better, those 
particular officers were superlatively the very best of all 
possible officers. 

My hand and my heart fail me in writing my record of 
this journey. The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital- 
beds of that Liverpool workhouse (a very good work- 
house, indeed, be it understood) was so shocking, and 
so shameful, that as an Englishman I blush to remem- 
ber it. It would have been simply unbearable at the 
time, but for the consideration and pity with which they 
were soothed in their sufferings. 

No punishment that our inefficient laws provide is 
worthy of the name when set against the guilt of this 
transaction. But if the memory of it die out unavenged, 
and if it do not result in the inexorable dismissal and dis- 
grace of those who are responsible for it, their escape 
will be infamous to the government (no matter of what 
party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous to the 
nation that tamely suffers such intolerable wrong to bo 
done in its name. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


IX. 


CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES. 

If the confession that I have often travelled from this 
Covent Garden lodging of mine on Sundays should give 
offence to those who never travel on Sundays, they will 
be satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the journeys in 
question were made to churches. 

Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preach- 
ers. Time was, when I was dragged by the hair of my 
head, as one may say, to hear too many. On summer 
evenings, when every flower and tree and bird might have 
better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day 
been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown, 
have been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of 
the hair as a purification for the Temple, and have then 
been carried off, highly charged with saponaceous electrici- 
ty, to be steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath 
of the powerful Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, un- 
til what small mind I had was quite steamed out of me. 
In which pitiable plight I have been haled out of the place 
of meeting, at the conclusion of the exdrcises, and cate- 
chised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly, 
and his seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend 
person in the light of a most dismal and oppressive Cha- 
rade. Time was, when I was carried off to platform 
assemblages at which no human child, whether of wrath 
3r grace, could possibly keep its eyes open, and when I 
felt the fatal sleep stealing, stealing over me, and when I 
gradually heard the orator in possession spinning and 
humming like a great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and 
tumbled over, and I discovered, to my burning shame 
and fear, that as to that last stage it was not he, but I. 
I have sat under Boanerges when he has specifically 
addressed himself to us, — us. the infants, — and at this 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


89 


present writing I hear his lumbering Jocularity (which 
never amused us, though we basely pretended that it 
did), and I behold his big round face, and I look up the 
inside of his outstretched coat-sleevc, as if it were a 
telescope with the stopper on, and I hate him with an 
unwholesome hatred for two hours. Through such means 
did it come to pass that I knew the powerful preacher 
from beginning to end, all over and all through, while I 
was very young, and that I left him behind at an early 
period of life. Peace be with him 1 More peace than he 
brought to me ! 

Now I have heard many preachers since that time, — 
not powerful ; merely Christian, unaffected, and reveren- 
tial, — and I have had many such preachers on my roll 
of friends. But it was not to hear these, any more than 
the powerful class, that I made my Sunday journeys. 
They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous churches 
in the City of London. It came into my head one day, 
here had I been cultivating a familiarity with all the 
churches of Eome, and I knew nothing of the insides of 
the old churches of London I This befell on a Sunday 
morning. I began my expeditions that very same day, 
and they lasted me a year. 

I never wanted to know the names of the churches to 
which I went, and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant 
in that particular of at least nine tenths of them. Indeed, 
saving that I know the church of old Gower’s tomb (he 
lies in efSgy with his head upon his books) to be the 
church of Saint Saviour’s, Southwark ; and the church 
of Milton’s tomb to be the Church of Cripplegate ; and 
the church on Cornhill with the great golden keys to be 
the church of Saint Peter ; I doubt if I could pass a com- 
petitive examination in any of the names. No question 
did I ever ask of living creature concerning these church- 
es, and no answer to any antiquarian question on the 
subject that I ever put to books shall harass the reader’s 
soul. A full half of my pleasure in them arose out of 
their mystery : mysterious I found them ; mysterious 
they shall remain for me. 

Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten 
old churches in the City of London ? 

It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morn* 


90 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ing, when I stroll down one of the many narrow hilly 
streets in the City that tend due south to the Thames. 
It is my first experiment, and 1 have come to the region 
of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have put down a 
fierce-eyed, spare old woman, whose slate-colored gown 
smells of herbs, and who walked up Aldersgate Street to 
some chapel where she comforts herself with brimstone 
doctrine, I warrant. We have also put down a stouter 
and sweeter old lady, with a pretty large prayer-book in 
an unfolded pocket-handkerchief, who got out at a corner 
of a court near Stationers’ Hall, and who, I think, must 
go to church there because she is the widow of some 
deceased old Company’s Beadle. The rest of our freight 
were mere chance pleasure-seekers and rural walkers, 
and went on to the Blackwall Railway. So many bells 
are ringing, when I stand undecided at a street corner, 
that every sheep in the ecclesiastical fold might be a 
bell-wether. The discordance is fearful. My state of 
indecision is referable to, and about equally divisible 
among, four great churches, which are all within sight 
and sound, — all within the space of a few square yards. 
As I stand at the street corner, I don’t see as many as 
four people at once going to church, though I see as 
many as four churches with their steeples clamoring for 
people. I choose my church, and go up the flight of 
steps to the great entrance in the tower. A mouldy 
tower within, and like a neglected wash-house. A rope 
comes through the beamed roof, and a man in the cor- 
ner pulls it and clashes the bell, — a whity-brown man, 
whose clothes were once black, — a man with flue on 
him, and cobweb. He stares at me, wondering how I 
come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he comes 
there. Through a screen of wood and glass I peep into 
the dim church. About twenty people are discernible, 
waiting to begin. Christening would seem to have faded 
out of this church long ago, for the font has the dust of 
desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover (shaped 
like an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it would n’t 
come off, upon requirement. I perceive the altar to be 
rickety, and the Commandments damp. Entering after 
this survey, I jostle the clergyman in his canonicals, who 
is entering, too, from a dark lane behind a pew of state 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


91 


with curtains, where nobody sits. The pew is ornament- 
ed with four blue wands, once carried by four somebodies, 
I suppose, before somebody else, but which there is no- 
body now to hold or receive honor from. I open the 
door of a family pew, and shut myself in ; if I could 
occupy twenty family pews at once, I might have them. 
The clerk, a brisk young man, (how does he come here ?) 
glances at me knowingly, as who should say, You have 
done it now ; you must stop.^^ Organ plays. Organ-loft 
is in a small gallery across the church ; gallery congre- 
gation, two girls. I wonder within myself what will 
happen when we are required to sing. 

There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, 
and while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in 
such fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working 
of the stops than of any music, I look at the books, 
which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They 
belonged, in 1*754, to the Dowgate family ; and who were 
they ? Jane Comport must have married Young Dow- 
gate, and come into the family that way ; Young Dow- 
'gate was courting Jane Comport when he gave her her 
prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf; 
if Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why did she die 
and leave the book here ? Perhaps at the rickety altar, 
and before the damp Commandments, she. Comport, had 
taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy, 
and perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as 
great a success as was expected ? 

The opening of the service recalls my wandering 
thoughts^. I then find, to my astonishment, that I have 
been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible snuff 
up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, 
sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes, the clergyman 
winks, the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and prob- 
ably winks) ; all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough. 
The snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, 
cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the 
something else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults 
below ? As sure as Death it is ! Not only in the cold 
damp February day do we cough and sneeze dead citi- 
zens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got 
into the very bellows of the organ, and half choked the 


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same. We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citi- 
zens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon the 
walls, and lie pulverized on the sounding-board aver the 
clergyman's head, and, when a gust of air comes, tumble 
down upon him. 

In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much 
snuff, made of the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, 
and other families and branches, that I gave but little 
heed to our dull manner of ambling through the service j 
to the brisk clerk^s manner of encouraging us to try a 
note or two at psalm time ; to the gallery congregation's 
manner of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time 
or tune ; to the whity-brown man^s manner of shutting the 
minister into the pulpit, and being very particular with 
the lock of the door, as if he were a dangerous animal. 
But I tried again next Sunday, and soon accustomed my- 
self to the dead citizens when I found that I could not 
possibly get on without them among the City churches. 

Another Sunday. 

After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a 
leg of mutton or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make 
selection of a church, oddly put away in a corner among 
a number of lanes, — a smaller church than the last, and 
an ugly, — of about the date of Queen Anne. As a con- 
gregation, we are fourteen strong ; not counting an ex- 
hausted charity-school in a gallery, which has dwindled 
away to four boys and two girls. In the porch is a bene- 
faction of loaves of bread, which there would seem to be 
nobody left in the exhausted congregation to claim, and 
which I saw an exhausted beadle, long faded out of uni- 
form, eating with his eyes for self and family when I 
passed in. There is also an exhausted clerk in a brown 
wig, and two or three exhausted doors and windows have 
been bricked up, and the service-books are musty, and the 
pulpit cushions are threadbare, and the whole of the 
church furniture is in a very advanced stage of exhaus- 
tion. We are three old women (habitual), two young 
lovers (accidental), two tradesmen, one with a wife and 
one alone, an aunt and nephew, again two girls (these 
two girls, dressed out for church with everything about 
them limp that should be stiff, and mce versa, are an inva 
liable experience), and three sniggering boys. The cler- 


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93 


gyman is, perhaps, the chaplain of a civic company ; he 
has the moist and vinous look, and eke the bulbous boots, 
of one acquainted with ^Twenty port, and comet vintages. 

We are so quiet in our dulness that the three snigger- 
ing boys, who have got away into a corner by the altar 
railing, give us a start like crackers, whenever they 
laugh. And this reminds me of my own village church, 
where, during sermon time on bright Sundays when the 
birds are very musical indeed, farmers’ boys patter oub 
over the stone pavement, and the clerk steps out from his 
desk after them, and is distinctly heard in the summer re- 
pose to pursue and punch them in the chur hyard, and is 
seen to return with a meditative countenance, making 
believe that nothing of the sort has happened. The aunt 
and nephew in this City church are much disturbed by 
the sniggering boys. The nephew is himself a boy, and 
the sniggerers tempt him to secular thoughts of marbles 
and string by secretly ofiering such commodities to his 
distant contemplation. This young Saint Anthony for a 
while resists, but presently becomes a backslider, and in 
dumb show defies the sniggerers to heave ” a marble or 
two in his direction. Herein he is detected by the aunt 
(a rigorous reduced gentlewoman, who has the charge of 
offices), and I perceive that worthy relative to poke him in 
the side with the corrugated hooked handle of an ancient 
umbrella. The nephew revenges himself for this by hold- 
ing his breath, and terrifying his kinswoman with the 
dread belief that he has made up his mind to burst. Re- 
gardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes 
discolored, and yet again swells and becomes discolored, 
until the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, 
with no visible neck, and with his eyes going before him 
like a prawn’s. This causes the sniggerers to regard 
flight as an eligible move, and I know which of them will 
go out first, because of the over-devout attention that he 
suddenly concentrates on the clergyman. In a little 
while this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstration of 
hushing his footsteps, and with a face generally expres- 
sive of having until now forgotten a religious appointment 
elsewhere, is gone. Number two gets out in the same 
way, but rather quicker. Number three, getting safely 
to the door, there turns reckless, and, banging it open, 


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flies forth with a Whoop ! that vibrates to the top of the 
tower above us. 

The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a 
muffled voice, may be scant of hearing as well as of 
breath ; but he only glances up, as having an idea that 
somebody has said Amen in a wrong place, and continues 
his steady jog-trot, like a farmer’s wife going to market. 
He does all he has to do in the same easy way, and gives 
us a concise sermon, still like the jog-trot of the farmer’s 
wife on a level road. Its drowsy cadence soon lulls the 
three old women asleep, and the unmarried tradesman sits 
looking out at window, and the married tradesman sits 
looking at his wife’s bonnet, and the lovers sit looking at 
one another, so superlatively happy, that I mind when I, 
turned of eighteen, went with my Angelica to a City 
church on account of a shower (by this special coinci- 
dence that it was in Huggin Lane), and when I said to 
my Angelica, ‘‘Let the blessed event, Angelica, occur at 
no altar but this ! ” and when my Angelica consented 
that it should occur at no other, — which it certainly 
never did, for it never occurred anywhere. And, 0 An- 
gelica, what has become of you, this present Sunday 
morning when I can’t attend to the sermon ? and, more 
difficult question than that, what has become of Me as I 
was when I sat by your side I 

But we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive 
which surely is a little conventional, — like the strange 
rustlings and settlings and clearings of throats and noses 
which are never dispensed with at certain points of the 
Church service, and are never held to be necessary under 
any other circumstances. In a minute more it is all over, 
and the organ expresses itself to be as glad of it as it 
can be of anything in its rheumatic state, and in another 
minute we are all of us out of the church, and Whity- 
brown has locked it up. Another minute or little more, 
and, in the neighboring churchyard, — not the yard of 
that church, but of another, — a churchyard like a great 
shabby old mignonette-box, with two trees in it and one 
tomb, — I meet Whity-brown, in his private capacity, 
fetching a pint of beer for his dinner from the public- 
house in the corner, where the keys of the rotting fire- 
ladders are kept and were never asked for, and where 


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95 


there is a ragged, white-seamed, out-at-elbowed bagatelle- 
board on the first floor. 

In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found 
an individual who might have been claimed as expressly 
a City personage. I remember the church by the feature 
that the clergyman could n’t get to his own desk without 
going through the clerk’s, or could n’t get to the pulpit 
without going through the reading-desk, — I forget which, 
and it is no matter, — and by the presence of this person- 
age among the exceedingly sparse congregation. I doubt 
if we were a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity- 
school to help us out. The personage was dressed in 
black of square cut, and was stricken in years, and wore 
a black velvet cap and cloth shoes. He was of a staid, 
wealthy, and dissatisfied aspect. In his hand he con- 
ducted to church a mysterious child, — a child of the 
feminine gender. The child had a beaver hat, with a 
stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to any bird 
of the air. The child was further attired in a nankeen 
frock and spencer, brown boxing-gloves, and a veil. It 
had a blemish, in the nature of currant jelly, on its chin ; 
and was a thirsty child. Insomuch that the personage 
carried in his pocket a green bottle, from which, when the 
first psalm was given out, the child was openly refreshed. 
At all other times throughout the service it was motion- 
less, and stood on the seat of the large pew, closely fitted 
into the corner, like a rain-water pipe. 

The personage never opened his book, and never looked 
at the clergyman. He never sat down either, but stood 
with his arms leaning on the top of the pew, and his fore- 
head sometimes shaded with his right hand, always look- 
ing at the church door. It was a long church for a church 
of its size, and he was at the upper end, but he always 
looked at the door. That he was an old book-keeper, or 
an old trader who had kept his own books, and that he 
might be seen at the Bank of England about Dividend 
times, no doubt. That he had lived in the City all his life, 
and was disdainful of other localities, no doubt. Why he 
looked at the door, I never absolutely proved, but it is 
my belief that he lived in expectation of the time when 
the citizens would come back to live in the City, and its 
ancient glories would be renewed. He appeared to^ex- 


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pect tnat this would occur on a Sunday, and that the 
wanderers would first appear in the deserted churches, 
penitent and humbled. Hence he looked at the door 
which they never darkened. Whose child the child was, 
— whether the child of a disinherited daughter, or some 
parish orphan whom the personage had adopted, — there 
was nothing to lead up to. It never played, or skipped, 
or smiled. Once the idea occurred to me that it was 
an automaton, and that the personage had made it ; but, 
following the strange couple out one Sunday, I heard the 
personage say to it, ‘‘ Thirteen thousand pounds ; to which 
it added, in a weak human voice, Seventeen and four- 
pence.^^ Four Sundays I followed them out, and this 
is all I ever heard or saw them say. One Sunday I fol- 
lowed them home. They lived behind a pump, and the 
personage opened their abode with an exceeding large 
key. The one solitary inscription on their house related 
to a fire-plug. The house was partly undermined by a 
deserted and closed gateway ; its windows were blind 
with dirt ; and it stood with its face disconsolately turned 
to a wall. Five great churches and two small ones rang 
their Sunday bells between this house and the church the 
couple frequented, so they must have had some special 
reason for going a quarter of a mile to it. The last time 
I saw them was on this wise. I had been to explore an- 
other church at a distance, and happened to pass the church 
they frequented, at about two of the afternoon, when that 
edifice was closed. But a little side-door, which I had 
never observed before, stood open and disclosed certain 
cellarous steps. Methought, They are airing the vaults 
to-day, when the personage and the child silently ar- 
rived at the steps, and silently descended. Of course I 
came to the conclusion that the personage had at last 
despaired of the looked-for return of the penitent citizens, 
and that he and the child went down to get themselves 
buried. 

In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one ob- 
scure church which had broken out in the melodramatic 
style, and was got up with various tawdry decorations, 
much after the manner of the extinct London May-poles. 
These attractions had induced several young priests or 
deacons in black bibs for waistcoats, and several young 


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97 


ladies interested in that holy order (the proportion being, 
as I estimated, seventeen young ladies to a deacon), to 
come into the City as a new and odd excitement. It was 
wonderful to see how these young people played out their 
little play in the heart of the City, all among themselves, 
without the deserted City’s knowing anything about it. 
It was as if you should take an empty counting-house on 
a Sunday, and act* one of the old Mysteries there. They 
had impressed a small school (from what neighborhood I 
don’t know) to assist in the performances ; and it was 
pleasant to notice frantic garlands of inscription on the 
walls, especially addressing those poor innocents in char- 
acters impossible for them to decipher. There was a re- 
markably agreeable smell of pomatum in this congregation. 

But in other cases rot and mildew and dead citizens 
formed the uppermost scent, while infused into it, in a 
dreamy way not at all displeasing, was the staple charac- 
ter of the neighborhood. In the churches about Mark 
Lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat ; and 
I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an 
aged hassock in one of them. From Eood Lane to Tower 
Street, and thereabouts, there was often a subtle flavor 
of wine ; sometimes of tea. One church near Mincing 
Lane smelt like a druggist’s drawer. Behind the Monu- 
ment the service had a flavor of damaged oranges, which 
a little farther down towards the river tempered into her- 
rings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of 
fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church 
in the Rake’s Progress where the hero is being married 
to the horrible old lady, there was no specialty of atmos- 
phere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over 
us from some adjacent warehouse. 

Be the scent what it would, however, there was no 
specialty in the people. There were never enough of 
them to represent any calling or neighborhood. They 
had all gone elsewhere overnight, and the few stragglers 
in the many churches languished there inexpressively. 

Among the uncommercial travels in which I have en- 
gaged, this year of Sunday travel occupies its own place 
apart from all the rest. Whether I think of the church 
where the sails of the oyster-boats in the river almost 
flapped against the windows, or of the church where the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above 
the roof, I recall a curious experience. On summer Sun- 
days, in the gentle rain or the bright sunshine, — either 
deepening the idleness of the idle City, — I have sat in 
that singular silence which belongs to resting-places usu- 
ally astir, in scores of buildings, at the heart of the 
world's metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers of 
people speaking the English tongue than the ancient edi- 
fices of the Eternal City, or the Pyramids of Egypt. The 
dark vestries and registries into which I have peeped, 
and the little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to 
my feet, have left impressions on my memory as distinct 
and quaint as any it has in that way received. In all 
those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is 
not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, 
in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry ! and the 
old tree at the window, with no room for its branches, 
has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the old Mas- 
ter of the old Company, on which it drips. His son re- 
stored it and died, his daughter restored it and died, and 
then he had been remembered long enough, and the tree 
took possession of him, and his name cracked out. 

There are few more striking indications of the changes 
of manners and customs that two or three hundred years 
have brought about, than these deserted churches. 
Many of them are handsome and costly structures, sev- 
eral of them were designed by Wren, many of them arose 
from the ashes of the great Are, others of them outlived 
the plague and the Are too, to die a slow death in these 
later days. No one can be sure of the coming time; 
but it is not too much to say of it that it has no sign, in 
its outseiting tides, of the reflux to these churches of 
their congregations and uses. They remain, like the 
tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them and around 
them. Monuments of another age. They are worth a 
Sunday exploration now and then, for they yet echo, not 
unharmoniously, to the time when the city of London 
really was London ; when the 'Prentices and Trained 
Bands were of mark in the state ; when even the Lord 
Mayor himself was a Reality, — not a Fiction conven- 
tionally bepufied on one day in the year by illustrious 
friends, who no less conventionally laugh at him on the 
remaining three hundred and sixty-four days. 


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99 


X. 


SHY NEIGHBORHOODS. 

So much of my travelling is done on foot, that, if 1 
cherished betting propensities, I should probably be 
found registered in sporting newspapers, under some 
such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven- 
stone mankind to competition in walking. My last spe- 
cial feat was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, 
pedestrian and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into 
the country to breakfast. The road was so lonely in the 
night, that I fell asleep to the monotonous sound of my 
own feet, doing their regular four miles an hour. Mile 
after mile I walked, without the slightest sense of exer- 
tion, dozing heavily and dreaming constantly. It was 
only when I made a stumble like a drunken man, or 
struck out into the road to avoid a horseman close upon 
me on the path, — who had no existence, — that I came 
to myself and looked about. The day broke mistily (it 
was autumn-time), and I could not disembarrass myself 
of the idea that I had to climb those heights and banks 
of cloud, and that there was an Alpine Convent some- 
where behind the sun, where I was going to breakfast. 
This sleepy notion was so much stronger than such sub- 
stantial objects as villages and haystacks, that, after the 
sun was up and bright, and when I was sufficiently awake 
to have a sense of pleasure in the prospect, I still occa- 
sionally caught myself looking about for wooden arms to 
point the right track up the mountain, and wondering 
there was no snow yet. It is a curiosity of broken sleep 
that I made immense quantities of verses on that pedes- 
trian occasion (of course I never make any when I am in 
my right senses), and that I spoke a certain language 
once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly for- 
gotten from disuse, with fluency. Of both these phcnom- 


100 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ena I have such frequent experience; in the state bet^veen 
sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with myself 
that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not 
bo half so ready. The readiness is not imaginary, because 
I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns 
of the fluent speech, after I am broad awake. 

My walking is of two kinds : one, straight on end to a 
definite goal at a round pace ; one, objectless, loitering, 
and purely vagabond. In the latter state, no gypsy on 
earth is a greater vagabond than myself; it is so natural 
to me and strong with me, that I think I must be the 
descendant, at no great distance, of some irreclaimable 
tramp. 

One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, 
in a vagabond course of shy metropolitan neighborhoods 
and small shops, is the fancy of a humble artist, as exem- 
plified in two portraits representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, 
of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United 
States of America. These illustrious men are highly 
colored, in fighting trim, and fighting attitude. To sug- 
gest the pastoral and meditative nature of their peaceful 
calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald sward, 
with primroses and other modest flowers springing up 
under the heels of his half-boots ; while Mr. Sayers is 
impelled to the administration of his favorite blow, the 
Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of a village church. 
The humble homes of England, with their domestic vir- 
tues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in 
and win ; and the lark and other singing-birds are observ- 
able in the upper air ecstatically carolling their thanks to 
Heaven for a fight. . On the whole, the associations in- 
twined with the pugilistic art by this artist are much in 
the manner of Izaak Walton. 

But it is with the lower animals of back streets and 
by-ways that my present purpose rests. For human 
notes we may return to such neighborhoods when leisure 
and opportunity serve. 

Nothing in shy neighborhoods perplexes my mind more 
than the bad company birds keep. Foreign birds often 
get into good society, but British birds are inseparable 
from low associates. There is a whole street of them in 
Saint Gileses ; and I always find them in poor and im- 


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101 


moral neighborhoods, convenient to the pnblic-honse and 
the pawnbroker’s. They seem to lead people into drink 
ing, and even the man who makes their cages usually 
gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this ? 
Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted vel- 
veteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats 
and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the 
respectable orders of society to undertake. In a dirty 
court in Spitalfields, once, I found a goldfinch drawing 
his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were 
in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird- 
shop, and offered, in writing, to barter himself against 
old clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen-stuff. Surely 
a low thing and a depraved taste in any finch ! I bought 
that goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung 
upon a nail over against my table. He lived outside a 
counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to be 
a dyer’s ; otherwise it would have been impossible to 
account for his perch sticking out of the garret window. 
From the time of his appearance in my room, either he 
left off being thirsty, — which was not in the bond, — or 
he could not make up his mind to hear his little bucket 
drop back into his well when he let It go, — a shock 
which in the best of times had made him tremble. He 
drew no water but by stealth and under the cloak of 
night. After an interval of futile and at length hopeless 
expectation, the merchant who had educated him was 
appealed to. The merchant was a bow-legged character, 
with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new straw- 
berry. He wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of the 
velveteen race velveteeny. He sent word that he would 

look round.” He looked round, appeared in the door- 
way of the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at 
the goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird ; 
when it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary 
buckets of water ; and finally leaped about his perch, and 
sharpened his bill, as if he had been to the nearest wine- 
vaults and got drunk. 

Donkeys again. I know shy neighborhoods where the 
Donkey goes in at the street door, and appears to live up 
stairs, for I have examined the back yard from over the 
palings, and have been unable to make him out. Gentil* 


102 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ity, nobility. Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in 
vain to do what he does for a costermonger. Feed him 
with oats at the highest price, put an infant prince and 
princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust his deli- 
cate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest slopes 
at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of him. 
Then starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a 
flat tray on it, and see him bowl from Whitechapel to 
Bayswater. There appears to be no particular private 
understanding between birds and donkeys in a state of 
nature ; but in the shy-neighborhood state you shall see 
them always in the same hands, and always developing 
their very best energies for the very worst company. I 
have known a donkey — by sight ; we were not on speak- 
ing terms — who lived over on the Surrey side of London 
Bridge, among the fastnesses of Jacobis Island and Dock- 
head. It was the habit of that animal, when his services 
were not in immediate requisition, to go out alone, idling. 
I have met him, a mile from his place of residence, loiter- 
ing about the streets ; and the expression of his counte- 
nance at such times was most degraded. He was at- 
tached to the establishment of an elderly lady who sold 
periwinkles ; and he used to stand on Saturday nights 
with a cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, 
pricking up his ears when a customer came to the cart, 
and too evidently deriving satisfaction from the knowl- 
edge that they got bad measure. His mistress was some- 
times overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever saw 
him (about five years ago) he was in circumstances of 
difficulty, caused by this failing. Having been left alone 
with the cart of periwinkles, and forgotten, he went ofi’ 
idling. He prowled among his usual low haunts for some 
time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not taking the 
cart into his calculations, he endeavored to turn up a 
narrow alley, and became greatly involved. He was 
taken into custody by the police, and, the Green Yard of 
the district being near at hand, was backed into that 
place of durance. At that crisis I encountered him ; the 
stubborn sense he evinced of being — not to compromise 
the expression — a blackguard, I never saw exceeded in 
the human subject. A flaring candle in a paper shade, 
stuck in among his periwinkles, showed him, with his 


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103 


ragged harness broken and his cart extensively shattered, 
twitching his mouth and shaking his hanging head, a 
picture of disgrace and obduracy. I have seen boys, 
being taken to station-houses, who were as like him as 
his own brother. 

The dogs of shy neighborhoods I observe to avoid 
play, and to be conscious of poverty. They avoid work, 
too, if they can, of course : that is in the nature of all 
animals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a back 
street in the neighborhood of Walworth, who has greatly 
distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes 
his portrait with him, when he makes an engagement, for 
the illustration of the play-bill. His portrait (which is 
not at all like him) represents him in the act of dragging 
to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have 
tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer. 
The design is pure poetry ; for there is no such Indian in 
the piece, and no such incident. He is a dog of the New- 
foundland breed, for whose honesty I would be bail to 
any amount ; but whose intellectual qualities, in associa- 
tion with dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high. Indeed, 
he is too honest for the profession he has entered. Being 
at a town in Yorkshire last summer, and seeing him 
posted in the bill of the night, I attended the perform- 
ance. His first scene was eminently successful ; but, as 
it occupied a second in its representation (and five lines 
in the bill), it scarcely afibrded ground for a cool and 
deliberate judgment of his powers. He had merely to 
bark, run on, and jump through an inn window after a 
comic fugitive. The next scene of importance to the fa- 
ble was a little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety, 
forasmuch as, while his master (a belated soldier in a den 
of robbers on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lament- 
ing the absence of his faithful dog, and laying great stress 
on the fact that he was thirty leagues away, the faithful 
dog was barking furiously in the prompter's box, and 
clearly choking himself against his collar. But it was in 
his greatest scene of all that his honesty got the better 
of him. He had to enter a dense and trackless forest, on 
the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at the murderer 
when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his 
victim bound ready for slaughter. It was a hot night. 


104 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


and he came into the forest from an altogether unexpected 
direction, in the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate 
trot, not in the least excited ; trotted to the foot-lights 
with his tongue out ; and there sat down, panting, and 
amiably surveying the audience, with his tail beating on 
the boards, like a Dutch clock. Meanwhile the murder- 
er, impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to 
him, “ Co-o-OME here ! while the victim, struggling with 
his bonds, assailed him with the most injurious expres- 
sions. It happened, through these means, that when he 
was in course of time persuaded to trot up and rend the 
murderer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic pur- 
poses) a little too obvious that he worked out that awful 
retribution by licking butter off his bloodstained hands. 

In a shy street, behind Long Acre, two honest dogs 
live who perform in Punch’s shows. I may venture to say 
that I am on terms of intimacy with both, and that I 
never saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to look 
down at the man inside the show, during the whole per- 
formance. The difficulty other dogs have in satisfying 
their minds about these dogs appears to be never over- 
come by time. The same dogs must encounter them over 
and over again, as they trudge along in their off-minutes 
behind the legs of the show and beside the drum ; but 
all dogs seem to suspect their frills and jackets, and to 
sniff at them as if they thought those articles of personal 
adornment an eruption, — a something in the nature of 
mange, perhaps. From this Covent Garden window of 
mine I noticed a country dog, only the other day, who 
had come up to Covent Garden Market under a cart, and 
had broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed along 
with him. He loitered about the corners of the four 
streets^ commanded by my window ; and bad London dogs 
came up, and told him lies that he did n’t believe ; and 
worse London dogs came up, and made proposals to him 
to go and steal in the market, which his principles re- 
jected ; and the ways of the town confused him, and he 
crept aside, and lay down in a door-way. He had scarce- 
ly got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with Toby. 
He was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when 
he saw the frill, and stopped in the middle of the street, 
appalled. The show was pitched, Toby retired behind 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


106 


the drapery, the audience formed, the drum and pipes 
struck up. My country dog* remained immovable, intent- 
ly staring at these strange appearances, until Toby opened 
the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered 
Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby^s mouth. At 
this spectacle the country dog threw up his head, gave 
one terrible howl, and fled due west. 

We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk 
more expressively of dogs keeping men. I know a bull- 
dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith who keeps a man. 
He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public- 
houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean 
against posts and look at him, and forces him to neglect 
work for him, and keeps him under rigid coercion. I 
once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman, — a 
gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford too. The 
dog kept the gentleman entirely for his glorification, and 
the gentleman never talked about anything but the ter- 
rier. This, however, was not in a shy neighborhood, and 
is a digression consequently. 

There are a great many dogs in shy neighborhoods 
who keep boys. I have my eye on a mongrel in Somers- 
town who keeps three boys. He feigns that he can 
bring down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can do 
neither), and he takes the boys out on sporting pretences 
into all sorts of suburban fields. He has likewise made 
them believe that he possesses some mysterious knowl- 
edge of the art of fishing, and they consider themselves 
incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a 
pickle-jar and a wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with 
them and barking tremendously. There is a dog resid- 
ing in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind man. 
He may be seen, most days, in Oxford Street, haling the 
blind man away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated 
by, and unintelligible to, the man, — wholly of the dog’s 
conception and execution. Contrariwise, when the man 
has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded thor- 
oughfare and meditate. I saw him yesterday, wearing 
the money-tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it 
to the public, taking the man against his will, on the 
invitation of a disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog 
at Harrow, — he was so intent on that direction. The 


106 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


north wall of Burlington House Gardens, between the 
Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy spot for appointments 
among blind men at about two or three o^clock in the after- 
noon. They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone 
there, and compare notes. Their dogs may always be ob- 
served at the same time openly disparaging the men they 
keep to one another, and settling where they shall respec- 
tively take their men when they begin to move again. At 
a small butcher’s, in a shy neighborhood (there is no rea- 
son for suppressing the name ; it is by Hotting Hill, and 
gives upon the district called the Potteries), I know a 
shaggy black and white dog who keeps a drover. He is 
a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently allows 
this drover to get drunk. On these occasions it is the 
dog’s custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping his 
eye on a few sheep, and thinking. I have seen him with 
six sheep, plainly casting up in his mind how many he 
began with when he left the market, and at what places 
he has left the rest. I have seen him perplexed by not 
being able to account to himself for certain particular 
sheep. A light has gradually broken on him, he has re- 
membered at what butcher’s he left them, and in a 
burst of grave satisfaction has caught a fly off his nose, 
and shown himself much relieved. If I could at any 
time have doubted the fact that it was he who kept the 
drover, and not the drover who kept him, it would have 
been abundantly proved by his way of taking undivided 
charge of the six sheep, when the drover came out be- 
smeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him wrong 
directions, which he calmly disregarded. He has taken 
the sheep entirely into his own hands, has merely re- 
marked, with respectful flrmness, That instruction 
would place them under an omnibus ; you had better 
confine your attention to yourself, — you will want it 
all ” ; and has driven his charge away, with an intelli- 
gence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that 
has left his lout of a man very, very far behind. 

As the dogs of shy neighborhoods usually betray a 
Blinking consciousness of being in poor circumstances, — 
for the most part manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an 
awkwardness in their play, and a misgiving that some- 
body is going to harness them to something, to pick up a 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


107 


liviDg, — so the cats of shy neighborhoods exhibit a strong 
tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not only are they 
made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the surplus 
population around them, and on the densely crowded 
state of all the avenues to cat^s meat, — not only is there 
a moral and politico-economical haggardness m them, 
traceable to these reflections, — but they evince a phys- 
ical deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is wretch- 
edly got up ; their black turns rusty, like old mourning ; 
they wear very indifierent fur, and take to the shabbiest 
cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of 
recognition with several small streets of cats, about the 
Obelisk in Saint George’s Fields, and also in the vicinity 
of Clerkenwell Green, and also in the back settlements of 
Drury Lane. In appearance they are very like the wo- 
men among whom they live. They seem to turn out of 
their unwholesome beds into the street without any prep- 
aration. They leave their young families to stagger 
about the gutters unassisted, while they frowzily quarrel 
and swear and scratch and spit, at street corners. In 
particular, I remark that when they are about to increase 
their families (an event of frequent recurrence) the resem- 
blance is strongly expressed in a certain dusty dowdiness, 
down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up of things. 
I cannot honestly report that I have ever seen a feline 
matron of this class washing her face when in an interest- 
ing condition. 

Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel 
among the lower animals of shy neighborhoods, by dwell- 
ing at length upon the exasperated moodiness of the tom- 
cats, and their resemblance in many respects to a man 
and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the 
fowls of the same localities. 

That anything born of an egg and invested with wings 
should have got to the pass that it hops contentedly down 
a ladder into a cellar, and calls that going home, is a cir- 
cumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in 
this connection to wonder at. Otherwise I might wonder 
at the completeness with which these fowls have become 
separated from all the birds of the air, — have taken to 
grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud, — have forgot- 
ten all about live trees, and make roosting-places of shop- 


108 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulkheads, and door-scra- 
pers. I wonder at nothing concerning them, and take 
them as they are. I accept as products of Nature and 
things of course a reduced Bantam family of my acquaint- 
ance in the Hackney Koad, who are incessantly at the 
pawnbroker's. I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, 
for they are of a melancholy temperament ; but what en- 
joyment they are capable of they derive from crowding 
together in the pawnbroker’s side-entry. Here they are 
always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were 
newly come down in the world, and were afraid of being 
identifled. I know a low fellow, originally of a good 
family from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment 
of wives, in single file, in at the door of the Jug Depart- 
ment of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manoeu- 
vres them among the company’s legs, emerges with them 
at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life ; seldom, in 
the season, going to bed before two in the morning. Over 
Waterloo Bridge there is a shabby old speckled couple 
(they belong to the wooden French bedstead, washing- 
stand, and towel-horse making trade), who are always 
trying to get in at the door of a chapel. Whether the 
old lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. South- 
cott, has an idea of intrusting an egg to that particular 
denomination, or merely understands that she has no 
business in the building and is consequently frantic to 
enter it, I cannot determine ; but she is constantly en- 
deavoring to undermine the principal door ; while her 
partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, 
encouraging her and defying the Universe. But the fam- 
ily I have been best acquainted with, since the removal 
from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, 
reside in the densest part of Bethnal Green. Their ab- 
sti action from the objects among which they live, or 
rather their conviction that those objects have all come 
into existence in express subservience to fowls, has so 
enchanted me, that I have made them the subject of many 
journeys at divers hours. After careful observation of 
the two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family con- 
sists, I have come to the conclusion that their opinions 
are represented by the leading lord and leading lady ; 
the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


109 


paucity of feather and visibility of quill, that gives hei 
the appearance of a bundle of office pens. When a rail- 
way goods-van that would crush an elephant comes round 
the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge un- 
harmed from under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the 
whole rush was a passing property in the air, which may 
have left something to eat behind it. They look upon old 
shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and fragments of 
bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge for fowls to peck 
at. Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think, as a sort 
of hail ; shuttlecocks, as rain or dew ; gas-light comes 
quite as natural to them as any other light ; and I have 
more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, 
the early public-house at the corner has superseded the 
sun. I have established it as a certain fact, that they 
always begin to crow when the public-house shutters 
begin to be taken down, and that they salute the pot-boy, 
the instant he appears to perform that duty, as if he were 
Phoebus in person. 


no 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XI. 


TRAMPS. 

The chance use of the word Tramp ” in my last 
paper brought that numerous fraternity so vividly before 
my mind’s eye, that I had no sooner laid down my pen 
than a compulsion was upon me to take it up again, and 
make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the 
summer roads in all directions. 

Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, 
he sits with his legs in a dry ditch ; and whenever he 
goes to sleep (which is very often indeed), he goes to 
sleep on his back. Yonder, by the high-road, glaring 
white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf 
under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the 
highway, the tramp of the order savage, fast asleep. He 
lies on the broad of his back, with his face turned up to 
the sky, and one of his ragged arms loosely thrown across 
his face. His bundle (what can be the contents of that 
mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while to carry it 
about ?) is thrown down beside him, and the waking wo- 
man with him sits with her legs in the ditch, and her 
back to the road. She wears her bonnet rakishly perched 
on the front of her head, to shade her face from the sun 
in walking, and she ties her skirts round her, in conven- 
tionally tight tramp-fashion, with a sort of apron. You 
can seldom catch sight of her, resting thus, without see- 
ing her in a despondently defiant manner doing something 
to her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you between 
her fingers. She does not often go to sleep herself in the 
daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside the 
man. And his slumberous propensities would not seem 
to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the bundle, for 
she carries it much oftener and farther than he. When 
they are afoot, you will mostly find him slouching on 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Ill 


ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily behind 
with the burden. He is given to personally correcting 
her, too, — which phase of his character develops itself 
oftenest on benches outside alehouse doors, — and she 
appears to become strongly attached to him for these rea- 
sons ; it may usually be noticed that when the poor crea- 
ture has a bruised face she is the most affectionate. He 
has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp, and has 
no object whatever in going anywhere. He will some- 
times call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only 
when he takes an imaginative flight. He generally rep- 
resents himself, in a vague way, as looking out for a job 
of work ; but he never did work, he never does, and he 
never, never will. It is a favorite fiction with him, how- 
ever (as if he were the most industrious character on 
earth), that you never work ; and as he goes past your 
garden, and sees you looking at your flowers, you will 
overhear him growl, with a strong sense of contrast, “ You 
are a lucky hidle devil, you are I 

The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and 
has the same injured conviction on him that you were 
born to whatever you possess, and never did anything to 
get it ; but he is of a less audacious disposition. He will 
stop before your gate, and say to his female companion, 
with an air of constitutional humility and propitiation, — 
to edify any one who may be within hearing behind a 
blind or a bush,. — “ This is a sweet spot, — ain^t it ? A 
lovelly spot I And I wonder if they M give two poor foot- 
sore travellers like me and you a drop of fresh water out 
of such a pretty gen-teel crib ? We M take it wery 
koind on ^em, would nH us ? — wery koind, upon my 
word, us would. He has a quick sense of a dog in the 
vicinity, and will extend his modestly injured propitiation 
to the dog chained up in your yard ; remarking, as he 
slinks at the yard gate, '' Ah I You are a foine breed 
o^ dog, too, and you ain’t kep for nothink I I ’d take it 
wery koind o’ your master if he ’d elp a traveller and his 
woife, as envies no gentlefolk their good fortun, wi’ a bit 
o’ your broken wittles. He ’d never know the want of it, 
nor more would you. Don’t bark like that at poor per- 
sons as never done you no arm ; the poor is down-trodden 
and broke enough without that ; 0 don’t I ” He general- 


112 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ly heaves a prodigious sigh in moving away, and always 
looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the road and 
down the road, before going on. 

Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust hab- 
it ; let the hard-working laborer at whose cottage door 
they prowl and beg have the ague never so badly, these 
tramps are sure to be in good health. 

There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter 
this bright summer day, — say, on a road with the sea- 
breeze making its dust lively, and sails of ships in the 
blue distance beyond the slope of Down. As you walk 
enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective, at the bot- 
tom of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that 
appears to be sitting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheer- 
ful and disengaged manner. As you approach nearer to 
it, you observe the figure to slide down from the gate, to 
desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to become ten- 
der of foot, to depress its head and elevate its shoulders, 
and to present all the characteristics of profound despond- 
ency. Arriving at the bottom of the hill, and coming 
close to the figure, you observe it to be the figure of a 
shabby young man. He is moving painfully forward, in 
the direction in which you are going, and his mind is so 
preoccupied with his misfortunes that he is not aware of 
your approach until you are close upon him at the hill- 
foot. When he is aware of you, you discover him to be 
a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a remarkably 
well-spoken young man. You know him to be well-be- 
haved by his respectful manner of touching his hat ; you 
know him to be well-spoken by his smooth manner of ex- 
pressing himself. lie says, in a flowing, confidential 
voice, and without punctuation, “ I ask your pardon sir 
but if you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed 
upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced to 
rags though it as not always been so and by no fault of 
his own but through ill elth in his family and many un- 
merited sufierings it would be a great obligation sir to 
know the time.^^ You give the well-spoken young man 
the time. The well-spoken young man, keeping well up 
with you, resumes : I am aware sir that it is a liberty 
to intrude a further question on a gentleman walking for 
his entertainment but might I make so bold as ask the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


118 


favor of the way to Dover sir and about the distance ? 
You inform the well-spoken young man that the way to 
Dover is straight on, and the distance some eighteen 
miles. The well-spoken young man becomes greatly agi- 
tated. “ In the condition to which I am reduced, says 
he, I could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if 
my shoes were in a state to take me there or my feet were 
in a state to old out over the flinty road and were not on 
the bare ground of which any gentleman has the means 
to satisfy himself by looking sir may I take the liberty of 
speaking to you ? As the well-spoken young man keeps 
so well up with you that you can’t prevent his taking the 
liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, with fluency : 
“ Sir it is not begging that is my intention for I was 
brought up by the best of mothers and begging is not my 
trade I should not know sir how to follow it as a trade if 
such were my shameful wishes for the best of mothers 
long taught otherwise and in the best of omes though now 
reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway sir my 
business was the law-stationering and I was favorably 
known to the Solicitor-Greneral the Attorney-General the 
majority of the Judges and the ole of the legal profession 
but through ill elth in my family and the treachery of a 
friend for whom I became security and he no other than 
my own wife’s brother the brother of my own wife I was 
cast forth with my tender partner and three young chil- 
dren not to beg for I will sooner die of deprivation but to 
make my way to the seaport town of Dover where I have 
a relative i in respect not only that will assist me but that 
would trust me with untold gold sir in appier times and 
hare this calamity fell upon me I made for my amusement 
when I little thought that I should ever need it excepting 
for my air this ” — here the well-spoken young man put 
his hand into his breast — ‘'this combi Sir I implore 
you in the name of charity to purchase a tortoise-shell 
/ comb which is a genuine article at any price that your 
humanity may put upon it and may the blessings of a 
ouseless family awaiting with beating arts the return of a 
husband and a father from Dover upon the cold stone 
seats of London Bridge ever attend you sir may I take 
the liberty of speaking to you I implore you to buy this 
comb I ” By this time, being a reasonably good walker, 
8 


114 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


you will have been too much for the well-spoken young 
man, who will stop short, and express his disgust and 
his want of breath in a long expectoration, as you leave 
him behind. 

Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright 
summer day, at the corner of the next little town or vil- 
lage, you may find another kind of tramp, embodied in 
the persons of a most exemplary couple whose only im- 
providence appears to have been, that they spent the last 
of their little All on soap. They are a man and woman, 
spotless to behold, — John Anderson, with the frost on 
his short smock-frock instead of his '' pow,’^ attended by 
Mrs. Anderson. John is over-ostentatious of the frost 
upon his raiment, and wears a curious, and, you would 
say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of girdle of 
white linen wound about his waist, — a girdle snowy as 
Mrs. Anderson’s apron. This cleanliness was the expir- 
ing efibrt of the respectable couple, and nothing then 
remained to Mr. Anderson but to get chalked upon his 
spade, in snow-white copy-book characters, hungry I and 
to sit down here. Yes ; one thing more remained to Mr. 
Anderson, — his character ; Monarchs could not deprive 
him of his hard-earned character. Accordingly, as you 
come up with this spectacle of virtue in distress, Mrs. 
Anderson rises, and with a decent courtesy presents for 
your consideration a certificate from a Doctor of Divinity, 
the reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodgington, who informs 
his Christian friends, and all whom it may concern, that 
the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are persons 
to whom you cannot be too liberal. This benevolent pas- 
tor omitted no work of his hands to fit the good couple 
out, for with half an eye you can recognize his autograph 
on the spade. 

Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable 
part of whose stock in trade is a highly perplexed de- 
meanor. He is got up like a countryman, and you will 
often come upon the poor fellow, while he is endeavoring 
to decipher the inscription on a milestone, — quite a 
fruitless endeavor, for he cannot read. He asks your 
pardon, he truly does (he is very slow of speech, this 
tramp, and he looks in a bewildered way all round the 
prospect while he talks to you) ; but all of us shold do 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


115 


as we wold be done by, and he ^11 take it kind il* you ^11 
put a power man in the right road fur to jine his eldest 
son as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this 
heere Orspit’l as is wrote down by Squire Poimcerby^s 
own hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man. He then 
produces from under his dark frock (being always very 
slow and perplexed) a neat but worn old leathern purse, 
from which he takes a scrap of paper. On this scrap of 
paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The Grove, 

Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but very worthy 
man, to the Sussex County Hospital, near Brighton,’^ — 
a matter of some difficulty at the moment, seeing that the 
request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of Hert- 
fordshire. The more you endeavor to indicate where 
Brighton is, — when you have with the greatest difficulty 
remembered, — the less the devoted father can be made 
to comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the 
prospect ; whereby, being reduced to extremity, you rec- 
ommend the faithful parent to begin by going to St. 
Alban’s, and present him with half a crown. It does 
him good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him forward, since 
you find him lying drunk that same evening in the wheel- 
wright’s sawpit under the shed where the felled trees are, 
opposite the sign of the Three Jolly Hedgers. 

But the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps is 
the tramp who pretends to have been a gentleman. 

Educated,” he writes from the village beer-shop in 
pale ink of a ferruginous complexion, — educated at 
Trim Coll. Cam., — nursed in the lap of affluence, — 
once, in my small way, the pattron of the Muses,” &c., 
&c., &c. ; surely a sympathetic mind will not with- 
hold a trifle to help him on to the market town where he 
thinks of giving a Lecture to the fruges consumere nati 
on things in general ? This shameful creature, lolling 
about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far 
from being black that they look as if they never can have 
been black, is more selfish and insolent than even the 
savage tramp. He would sponge on the poorest boy for 
a farthing, and spurn him when he had got it ; he would 
interpose (if he could get anything by it) between the 
baby and the mother’s breast. So much lower than the 
company he keeps for his maudlin assumption of being 


116 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


higher, this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he 
maunders on between the luxuriant hedges ; where (to 
my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and 
sweetbrier are the worse for his going by, and need time 
to recover from the taint of him in the air. 

The young fellows who, trudge along barefoot, five or 
six together, their boots slung over their shoulders, their 
shabby bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut 
from some roadside wood, are not eminently prepossess- 
ing, but are much less objectionable. There is a tramp- 
fellowship among them. They pick one another up at 
resting-stations, and go on in companies. They always 
go at a fast swing, — though they generally limp, too ; 
and there is invariably one of the company who has much 
ado to keep up with the rest. They generally talk 
about horses, and any other means of locomotion than 
walking ; or one of the company relates some recent 
experiences of the road, — which are always disputes 
and difficulties. As, for example : “ So, as Pm a stand- 
ing at the pump in the market, blest if there donH come 
up a Beadle, and he ses, ‘Mustn’t stand here,’ he ses. 
' Why not ? ’ I ses. ‘ No beggars allowed in this town,’ 
he ses. ‘ Who ’s a beggar ? ’ I ses. ‘ You are,’ he ses. 

‘ Who ever see me beg ? Did you f ’ I ses. ‘ Then you ’re 
a tramp,’ he ses. ‘ I ’d rather be that than a Beadle,’ I 
ses.” (The company express great approval.) “ ‘ Would 
you ? ’ he ses to me. ‘ Yes, I would,’ I ses to him. ‘ Well,’ 
he ses, ‘ anyhow, get out of this town.’ ‘ Why, blow 
your little town I ’ I ses, ‘ who wants to be in it ? Wot 
does your dirty little town mean by cornin’ and stickin’ 
itself in the road to anywhere ? Why don’t you get a 
shovel and a barrer, and clear your town out o’ people’s 
way ? ’ ” (The company expressing the highest approval 
and laughing aloud, they all go down the hill.) 

Then there are the tramp handicraft men. Are they 
not all over England in this midsummer time ? Where 
does the lark sing, the corn grow, the mill turn, the river 
run, and they are not among the lights and shadows, 
tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock-mend- 
ing, knife-grinding ? Surely a pleasant thing, if we were 
in that condition of life, to grind our way through Kent, 
Sussex, and Surrey. For the first six weeks or so we 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


117 


should see the sparks we ground off fiery bright against 
a background of green wheat and green leaves. A little 
later, and the ripe harvest would pale our sparks from 
red to yellow, until we got the dark newly turned land 
for a background again, and they were red once more. 
By that time we should have ground our way to the sea- 
cliffs, and the whir of our wheel would be lost in the 
breaking of the waves. Our next variety in sparks would 
be derived from contrast with the gorgeous medley of 
colors in the autumn woods, and, by the time we had 
ground our way round to the heathy lands between Rei- 
gate and Croydon, doing a prosperous stroke of business 
all along, we should show like a little firework in the 
light frosty air, and be the next best thing to the black- 
smith's forge. Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair- 
mending tour. What judges we should be of rushes, and 
how knowingly (with a sheaf and a bottomless chair at 
our back) we should lounge on bridges,, looking over at 
osier-beds I Among all the innumerable occupations that 
cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of 
lookers-on, chair-mending may take a station in the first 
rank. When we sat down with our backs against the 
barn or the public-house, and began to mend, what a 
sense of popularity would grow upon us I When all the 
children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the gen- 
eral dealer, and the farmer who had been giving a small 
order at the little saddler^s, and the groom from the great 
house, and the publican, and even the two skittle-players 
(and here note that, howsoever busy all the rest of vil- 
lage humankind may be, there will always be two people 
with leisure to play at skittles, wherever village skittles 
are), what encouragement would be on us to plait and 
weave I No one looks at us while we plait and weave 
these words. Clock-mending again. Except for the 
slight inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, 
and the monotony of making the bell go whenever we 
came to a human habitation, what a pleasant privilege to 
give a voice to the dumb cottage clock, and set it talking 
to the cottage family again I Likewise we foresee great 
interest in going round by the park plantations, under 
the overhanging boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and 
pheasants scudding like mad across and across the check- 


118 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ered ground before us), and so over the park ladder, and 
through the wood, until we came to the Keeper^s lodge. 
Then would the Keeper be discoverable at his door, in a 
deep nest of leaves, smoking his pipe. Then, on our 
accosting him in the way of our trade, would he call to 
Mrs. Keeper, respecting ould clock in the kitchen. 
Then would Mrs. Keeper ask us into the lodge, and on 
due examination we should offer to make a good job of it 
for eighteen-pence ; which offer, being accepted, would 
set as tinkling and clinking among the chubby, awe-struck 
little Keepers for an hour and more. So completely to 
the family^s satisfaction would we achieve our work, that 
the Keeper would mention how that there was something 
wrong with the bell of the turret stable clock up at the 
Hall ; and that, if we thought good of going up to the 
housekeeper on the chance of that job too, why, he would 
take us. Then should we go among the branching oaks 
and the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery known to 
the Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and there as 
we went along, until we came to the old Hall, solemn and 
grand. Under the Terrace Flower Garden, and round by 
the stableS', would the Keeper take us in ; and as we 
passed we should observe how spacious and stately the 
stables, and how fine the painting of the horses’ names 
over their stalls, and how solitary all, the family being in 
London. Then should we find ourselves presented to the 
housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state, at needle-work in 
a bay-window, looking out upon a mighty grim red-brick 
quadrangle, guarded by stone lions disrespectfully throw- 
ing somersaults over the escutcheons of the noble family. 
Then, our services accepted and we insinuated with a 
candle into the stable turret, we should find it to be a 
mere question of pendulum, but one that would hold us 
until dark. Then should we fall to work, with a general 
impression of Ghosts being about, and of pictures in-doors 
that of a certainty came out of their frames and ‘‘ walked,” 
if the family would only own it. Then should we work 
and work, until the day gradually turned to dusk, and 
even until the dusk gradually turned to dark. Our task 
at length accomplished, we should be taken into an 
enormous servants’ hall, and there regaled with beef and 
bread, and powerful ale. Then, paid freely, we should 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


119 


be at liberty to go, and should be told by a pointing 
helper to keep round over yinder by the blasted ash, and 
so straight through the woods, till we should see the 
town lights right afore us. Then, feeling lonesome, should 
we desire, upon the whole, that the ash had not been 
blasted, or that the helper had had the manners not to 
mention it. However, we should keep on, all right, till 
suddenly the stable-bell would strike ten in the dolefullest 
way, quite chilling our blood, though we had so lately 
taught him how to acquit himself. Then, as we went on, 
should we recall old stories, and dimly consider what it 
would be most advisable to do, in the event of a tall fig- 
ure, all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up and say- 
ing, “ I want you to come to a churchyard, and mend a 
church clock. Follow me ! Then should we make a 
burst to get clear of the trees, and should soon find our- 
selves in the open, with the town lights bright ahead of 
us. So should we lie that night at the ancient sign of 
the Crispin and Crispanus, and rise early next morning 
to be betimes on tramp again. 

Bricklayers often tramp in twos and threes, lying by 
night at their ‘‘ lodges,’^ which are scattered all over the 
country. Bricklaying is another of the occupations that 
can by no means be transacted in rural parts without the 
assistance of spectators, — of as many as can be con- 
vened. In thinly peopled spots, I have known brick- 
layers on tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to 
be so sensible of the indispensability of lookers-on, that 
they themselves have set up in that capacity, and have 
been unable to subside into the acceptance of a proffered 
share in the job for two or three days together. Some- 
times the ‘‘ navvy on tramp, with an extra pair of half- 
boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and a can, will 
take a similar part in a job of excavation, and will look 
at it, without engaging in it, until all his money is gone. 
The current of my uncommercial pursuits caused me only 
last summer to want a little body of workmen for a cer- 
tain spell of work in a pleasant part of the country ; and 
I was at one time honored with the attendance of as 
many as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at six. 

Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in the 
summer-time, without storing up knowledge of the many 


120 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


tramps who go from one oasis of town or village to an- 
other, to sell a stock in trade apparently not worth a 
shilling when sold ? Shrimps are a favorite commodity 
for this kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and 
spongy character, coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy 
balls. The stock is carried on the head in a basket, and 
between the head and the basket are the trestles on 
which the stock is displayed at trading times. Fleet of 
foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly ; with a 
certain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious bal- 
ancing of baskets ; and also with a long, Chinese sort of 
eye, which an overweighted forehead would seem to have 
squeezed into that form. 

On the hot, dusty roads near seaport towns and great 
rivers, behold the tramping Soldier. And if you should 
happen never to have asked yourself whether his uniform 
is suited to his work, perhaps the poor fellow^s appear- 
ance, as he comes distressfully towards you, with his ab- 
surdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his hand, 
and his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may 
suggest the personal inquiry, how you think you would 
like it. Much better the tramping Sailor, although his 
cloth is somewhat too thick for land service. But why 
the tramping merchant-mate should put on a black velvet 
waistcoat, for a chalky country in the dog-days, is one of 
the great secrets of nature that will never be discovered. 

I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered 
on either side by a wood, and having on one hand, be- 
tween the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of 
grass. Wild-flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and 
it lies high and airy, with the distant river stealing stead- 
ily away to the ocean, like a man^s life. To gain the 
milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue- 
bells, and wild roses would soon render illegible but for 
peering travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, 
you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may. 
So all the tramps with carts or caravans — the Gypsy- 
tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack — find it impossi- 
ble to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn the 
horse loose, when they come to it, and boil the pot. 
Bless the place ! I love the ashes of the vagabond fires 
that have scorched its grass I What tramp children do I 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


121 


see here, attired in a handful of rags, making a gymna- 
sium of the shafts of the cart, making a feather-bed of the 
flints and brambles, making a toy of the hobbled old horse, 
who is not much more like a horse than any cheap toy 
would be I Here do I encounter the cart of mats and 
brooms and baskets, — with all thoughts of business given 
to the evening wind, — with the stew made and being 
served out, — with Cheap Jack and Dear Jill striking scft 
music out of the plates that are rattled like warlike cym- 
bals when put up for auction at fairs and markets, — their 
minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the 
nightingales, as they begin to sing in the woods behind 
them, that, if I were to propose to deal, they would sell me 
anything at cost price. On this hallowed ground has it 
been my happy privilege (let me whisper it) to behold 
the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes eating meat-pie 
with the Giant ; while, by the hedge-side, on the box of 
blankets which I knew contained the snakes, were set 
forth the cups and saucers and the teapot. It was on an 
evening in August that I chanced upon this ravishing 
spectacle ; and I noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined 
half concealed beneath the overhanging boughs, and 
seemed indifferent to Nature, the white hair of the gra- 
cious Lady streamed free in the breath of evening, and her 
pink eyes found pleasure in the landscape. I heard only a 
single sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent for 
modest repartee. The ill-mannered Giant — accursed be 
his evil race I — had interrupted the Lady in some re- 
mark ; and, as I passed that enchanted corner of the 
wood, she gently reproved him, with the words, “ Now, 
Cobby ; — Cobby ! so short a name I — “ ain’t one fool 
enough to talk at a time ? ” 

Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, 
though not so near it as that the song trolled from tap or 
bench at door can invade its woodland silence, is a little 
hostelry which no man possessed of a penny was ever 
known to pass in warm weather. Before its entrance are 
certain pleasant trimmed lines ; likewise a cool well, with 
so musical a bucket-handle that its fall upon the bucket- 
rim will make a horse prick up his ears and neigh, upon 
the droughty road, half a mile off. This is a house of 
great resort for haymaking tramps, and harvest tramps, in- 


122 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


somucli that they sit within, drinking their mugs of beer ; 
their relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks glare out of 
the open windows, as if the whole establishment were a 
family war-coach of Ancient Britons. Later in the season 
the whole country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm 
with hopping tramps. They come in families, men, wo- 
men, and children, every family provided with a bundle 
of bedding, an iron pot, a number of babies, and too often 
with some poor sick creature quite unfit for the rough life, 
for whom they suppose the smell of the fresh hop to be a 
sovereign remedy. Many of these hoppers are Irish, but 
many come from London. They crowd all the roads, 
and camp under all the hedges and on all the scraps of 
common land, and live among and upon the hops until they 
are all picked, and the hop-gardens, so beautiful through 
the summer, look as if they had been laid waste by an in- 
vading army. Then there is a vast exodus of tramps out 
of the county ; and if you ride or drive round any turn of 
any road, at more than a footpace, you will be bewildered 
to find that you have charged into the bosom of fifty fam- 
ilies, and that there are splashing up all around you, in 
the utmost prodigality of confusion, bundles of bedding, 
babies, iron pots, and a good-humored multitude of both 
sexes and all ages, equally divided between perspiration 
and intoxication. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


123 


XII. 

DULLBOROUGH TOWN. 

It lately happened that I found myself rambling about 
the scenes among which my earliest days were passed, 
scenes from which I departed when I was a child, and 
which I did not revisit until I was a man. This is no 
uncommon chance, but one that befalls some of us any 
day ; perhaps it may not be quite uninteresting to com- 
pare notes with the reader respecting an experience so 
familiar, and a journey so uncommercial. 

I call my boyhood^s home (and I feel like a Tenor in 
an English Opera when I mention it) Dullborough. Most 
of us come from Dullborough who come from a country 
town. 

As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no 
railroads in the land, I left it in a stage-coach. Through 
all the years that have since passed, have I ever lost the 
smell of the damp straw in which I was packed — like 
game — and forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys, 
Wood Street, Cheapside, London ? There was no other 
inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in soli- 
tude and dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and 
I thought life sloppier than I had expected to find it. 

Witk this tender remembrance upon me, I was cava- 
lierly shunted back into Dullborough, the other day, by 
train. My ticket had been previously collected, like my 
taxes ; and my shining new portmanteau had had a great 
plaster stuck upon it, and I had been defied by act of 
Parliament to offer an objection to anything that was done 
to it, or me,under a penalty of not less than forty shillings 
or more than five pounds, compoundable for a term of 
imprisonment. When I had sent my disfigured property 
on to the hotel, I began to look about me ; and the first 
discovery I made was, that the Station had swallowed 
up the playing-field. 


124 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn- trees, the 
hedge, the tuff, and all those buttercups and daisies, had 
given place to the stoniest of jolting roads ; while beyond 
the Station an ugly dark monster of a tunnel kept its jaws 
open, as if it had swallowed them, and were ravenous for 
more destruction. The coach that had carried me away 
was melodiously called Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid, and 
belonged to Timpson, at the coach-olBfice up street ; the 
locomotive engine that had brought me back was called 
severely No 9*7, and belonged to S. E. K., and was spit- 
ting ashes and hot water over the blighted ground. 

When I had been let out at the platform door, like a 
prisoner whom his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked 
in again over the low wall at the scene of departed glo- 
ries. Here, in the haymaking time, had I been delivered 
from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile (of 
haycock), by my countrymen, the victorious British (boy 
next door and his two cousins), and had been recognized 
with ecstasy by my afiSanced one (Miss Green), who had 
come all the way from England (second house in the ter- 
race) to ransom me and marry me. Here had I first 
heard in confidence, from one whose father was greatly 
connected, being under government, of the existence of a 
terrible banditti, called The Radicals,^^ whose princi- 
ples were, that the Prince Regent wore stays, and that 
nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army and 
navy ought to be put down, — horrors at which I trem- 
bled in my bed, after supplicating that the Radicals might 
be speedily taken and hanged. Here, too, had we, the 
small boys of Boleses, had that cricket-match against the 
small boys of Coleses, when Boles and Coles had actuallj^ 
met upon the ground, and when, instead of instantly hit- 
ting out at one another with the utmost fury, as we had 
all hoped and expected, those sneaks had said respective- 
ly, I hope Mrs. Boles is well/' and, “ I hope Mrs. Coles 
and the baby are doing charmingly." Could it be that, 
after all this and much more, the Playing-field was a 
Station, and No. 97 expectorated boiling water and red- 
hot cinders on it, and the whole belonged by Act of Par- 
liament to S. E. R. ? 

As it could be and was, I left the place with a heavy 
heart for a walk all over the town. And first of Timp- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


126 


son^s up street. When I departed from Bullborough in 
the strawy arms of Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid, Timpson^s 
was a moderate-sized coach-oflSce (in fact, a little coach- 
office), with an oval transparency in the window, which 
looked beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson^s 
coaches in the act of passing a milestone on the London 
road with great velocity, completely full inside and out, 
and all the passengers dressed in the first style of fash- 
ion, and enjoying themselves tremendously. I found no 
such place as Timpson’s now, — no such bricks and raft- 
ers, not to mention the name, — no such edifice on the 
teeming earth. Bickford had come and knocked Timp- 
son’s down. Bickford had not only knocked Timpson’s 
down, but had knocked two or three houses down on 
each side of Timpson’s, and then had knocked the whole 
into one great establishment, with a pair of big gates, 
in and out of which his (Bickford’s) wagons are, in 
these days, always rattling, with their drivers sitting up 
so high that they look in at the second-fioor windows of 
the old-fashioned houses in the High Street as they shake 
the town. I have not the honor of Bickford’s acquaint- 
ance, but I felt that he had done me an injury, not to 
say committed an act of boyslaughter, in running over 
my childhood in this rough manner ; and if ever I meet 
Bickford driving one of his own monsters, and smoking 
a pipe the while (which is the custom of his men), he 
shall know by the expression of my eye, if it catches 
his, that there is something wrong between us. 

Moreover, I felt that Bickford had no right to come 
rushing into Bullborough and deprive the town of a pub- 
lic picture. He is not Napoleon Bonaparte. When he 
took down the transparent stage-coach, he ought to have 
given the town a transparent van. With a gloomy con- 
viction that Bickford is wholly utilitarian and unimagina- 
tive, I proceeded on my way. 

It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a 
night-bell at my door ; for in my very young days I was 
taken to so many lyings-in that I wonder I escaped be- 
coming a professional martyr to them in after life. I 
suppose I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large 
circle of married acquaintance. However that was, as I 
continued my walk through Bullborough, I found many 


126 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


houses to be solely associated in my mind with this par- 
ticular interest. At one little green-grocer^ s shop, down 
certain steps from the street, I remembered to have waited 
on a lady who had had four children (I am afraid to write 
five, though I fully believe it was five) at a birth. This 
meritorious woman held quite a Reception in her room on 
the morning when I was introduced there ; and the sight of 
the house brought vividly to my mind how the four (five) 
deceased young people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth 
on a chest of drawers ; reminding me by a homely asso- 
ciation, which I suspect their complexion to have assisted, 
of pigs^ feet as they are usually displayed at a neat tripe- 
shop. Hot caudle was handed round on the occasion ; and 
I further remembered, as I stood contemplating the green- 
grocer’s, that a subscription was entered into among the 
company, which became extremely alarming to my con- 
sciousness of having pocket-money on my person. This 
fact being known to my conductress, whoever she was, I 
was earnestly exhorted to contribute, but resolutely de- 
clined ; therein disgusting the company, who gave me to 
understand that I must dismiss all expectations of going 
to heaven. 

How does it happen that, when all else is change 
wherever one goes, there yet seem, in every place, to be 
some few people who never alter ? As the sight of the 
green-grocer’s house recalled these trivial incidents of 
long ago, the identical green-grocer appeared on the steps, 
with his hands in his pockets, and leaning his shoulder 
against the door-post, as my childish eyes had seen him 
many a time ; indeed, there was his old mark on the door- 
post yet, as if his shadow had become a fixture there. It 
was he himself ; he might formerly have been an old-look- 
ing young man, or he might now be a young-looking old 
man, but there he was. In walking along the street I had 
as yet looked in vain for a familiar face, or even a trans- 
mitted face ; here was the very green-grocer who had 
been weighing and handling baskets on the morning of 
the reception. As he brought with him a dawning re- 
membrance that he had had no proprietary interest in 
those babies, I crossed the road, and accosted him on the 
subject. He was not in the least excited or gratified, or in 
any way roused, by the accuracy of my recollection, but 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


127 


said, Yes, summut out of the common — he didn^t re- 
member how many it was (as if half a dozen babes either 
way made no difference) — had happened to a Mrs. 
What^s-her-name, as once lodged there — but he did n^t 
call it to mind, particular. Nettled by this phlegmatic 
conduct, I informed him that I had left the town when I 
was a child. He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and 
not without a sarcastic kind of complacency. Had I ? 
Ah I And did I find it had got on tolerably well without 
me ? Such is the difference (I thought, when I had left 
him a few hundred yards behind, and was by so much in 
a better temper) between going away from a place and 
remaining in it. I had no right, I reflected, to be angry 
with the green-grocer for his want of interest. I was noth- 
ing to him ; whereas he was the town, the cathedral, the 
bridge, the river, my childhood, and a large slice of my 
life, to me. 

Of course, the town had shrunk fearfully since I was a 
child there. I had entertained the impression that the 
High Street was at least as wide as Regent Street, Lon- 
don, or the Italian Boulevard at Paris. I found it little 
better than a lane. There was a public clock in it, which 
I had supposed to be the finest clock in the world ; where- 
as it now turned out to be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and 
weak a clock as ever I saw. It belonged to a Town Hall, 
where I had seen an Indian (who I now suppose wasn^t 
an Indian) swallow a sword (which I now suppose he 
didnT). The edifice had appeared to me in those days 
so glorious a structure, that I had set it up in my mind 
as the model on which the Genie of the Lamp built the 
palace for Aladdin. A mean little brick heap, like a 
demented chapel, with a few yawning persons in leather 
gaiters, and in the last extremity for something to do, 
lounging at the door with their hands in their pockets, 
and calling themselves a Corn Exchange I 

The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the 
fishmonger, who had a compact show of stock in his win- 
dow, consisting of a sole and a quart of shrimps ; and I 
resolved to comfort my mind by going to look at it. 
Richard the Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first 
appeared to me there, and had made my heart leap with 
terror by backing up against the stage-box in which I 


128 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


was posted, while struggling for life against the virtuous 
Richmond. It was within those walls that I had learnt, 
as from a page of English history, how that wicked King 
slept in war-time on a sofa much too short for him, and how 
fearfully his conscience troubled his boots. There, too, 
had I first seen the funny countryman — but countryman 
of noble principles, in a flowered waistcoat — crunch up 
his little hat, and throw it on the ground, and pull oft’ his 
coat, saying, “ Dom thee, squire, coom on with thy fistes 
then 1 At which the lovely young woman who kept 
company with him (and who went out gleaningj in a nar- 
row white muslin apron with five beautiful bars of five 
different colored ribbons across it) was so frightened for 
his sake, that she fainted away. Many wondrous secrets 
of nature had I come to the knowledge of in that sanctu- 
ary ; of which not the least terrific were, that the witches 
in Macbeth bore an awful resemblance to the Thanes and 
other proper inhabitants of Scotland ; and that the good 
King Duncan could n’t rest in his grave, but was con- 
stantly coming out of it and calling himself somebody 
else. To the Theatre, therefore, I repaired for consola- 
tion. But I found very little, for it was in a bad and a 
declining way. A dealer in wine and bottled beer had 
already squeezed his trade into the box-office ; and the 
theatrical money was taken — when it came — in a kind 
of meat-safe in the passage. The dealer in wine and 
bottled beer must have insinuated himself under the stage 
too ; for he announced that he had various descriptions 
of alcoholic drinks “in the wood,” and there was no 
possible stowage for the wood anywhere else. Evidently, 
he was by degrees eating the establishment away to the 
core, and would soon have sole possession of it. It 
was To Let, and hopelessly so, for its old purposes ; and 
there had been no entertainment within its walls for a 
long time, except a Panorama ; and even that had been 
announced as pleasingly instructive,” and I know too 
well the fatal meaning and the leaden import of Ahose 
terrible expressions. No, there was no comfort in the 
Theatre. It was mysteriously gone, like my own youth. 
Unlike my own youth, it might be coming back some day; 
but there was little promise of it. 

As the town was placarded with references to the Dull- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


129 


borough Mechanics' Institution, I thought I would go 
and look at that establishment next. There had been 
no such thing in the town, in my young day, and it oc- 
curred to me that its extreme prosperity might have 
brought adversity upon the Drama. I found the Institu- 
tion with some difficulty, and should scarcely have known 
that I had found it, if I had judged from its external 
appearance only ; but this was attributable to its never 
having been finished, and having no front ; consequently, 
it led a modest and retired existence up a stable-yard. 
It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) a most flourishing Institu- 
tion, and of the highest benefit to the town, — two tri- 
umphs which I was glad to understand were not at all 
impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics 
belonged to it, and that it was steeped in debt to the 
chimney-pots. It had a large room, which was ap- 
proached by an infirm step-ladder ; the builder having 
declined to construct the intended staircase without a 
present payment in cash, which Dullborough (though 
profoundly appreciative of the Institution) seemed unac- 
countably bashful about subscribing. The large room 
had cost — or would, when paid for — five hundred 
pounds ; and it had more mortar in it and more echoes 
than one might have expected to get for the money. It 
was fitted up with a platform, and the usual lecturing 
tools, including a large black-board of a menacing ap- 
pearance. On referring to lists of the courses of lectures 
that had been given in this thriving Hall, I fancied I de- 
tected a shyness in admitting that human nature when at 
leisure has any desire whatever to be relieved and di- 
verted, and a furtive sliding-in of any poor makeweight 
piece of amusement, shamefacedly and edgewise. Thus, 
I observed that it was necessary for the members to be 
knocked on the head with Gas, Air, Water, Food, the 
Solar System, the Geological periods. Criticism on Milton, 
the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and Arrow-Headed In- 
scriptions, before they might be tickled by those unac- 
countable choristers, the negro singers in the court 
costume of the reign of George the Second. Likewise, 
that they must be stunned by a weighty inquiry whether 
there was internal evidence in Shakespeare's works to 
prove that his uncle by the mother's side lived for some 
9 


180 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


years at Stoke Newington, before they were brought to 
by a Miscellaneous Concert. But indeed the masking of 
entertainment, and pretending it was something else, — • 
as people mask bedsteads when they are obliged to have 
them in sitting-rooms, and make believe that they are 
bookcases, sofas, chests of drawers, anything rather than 
bedsteads, — was manifest even in the pretence of drear- 
iness that the unfortunate entertainers themselves felt 
obliged in decency to put forth when they came here. 
One very agreeable professional linger, who travelled with 
two professional ladies, knew oetter than to introduce 
either of those ladies to sing the ballad “ Comin^ through 
the Rye,^^ without prefacing it himself with some general 
remarks on wheat and clover ; and even then he dared 
not for his life call the song a song, but disguised it in 
the bill as an “ Illustration.^^ In the library, also, — 
fitted with shelves for three thousand books, and contain- 
ing upwards of one hundred and seventy (presented 
copies mostly), seething their edges in damp plaster, — 
there was such a painfully apologetic return of 62 ofienders 
who had read Travels, Popular Biography, and mere 
Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the hearts and 
souls of mere human creatures like themselves ; and such 
an elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who had had 
down Euclid after the day’s occupation and confinement ; 
and 3 who had had down Metaphysics after ditto ; and 
1 who had had down Theology after ditto ; and 4 who 
had woia*ied Grammar, Political Economy, Botany, and 
Logarithms all at once after ditto ; that I suspected the 
boasted class to be one man, who had been hired to do 
it. 

Emerging from the Mechanics’ Institution, and contin- 
uing my walk about the town, I still noticed everywhere 
the prevalence, to an extraordinary degree, of this cus- 
tom of putting the natural demand for amusement out of 
sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pre- 
tending that it was swept away. And yet it was minis- 
tered to in a dull and abortive manner by all who made 
this feint. Looking in at what is called in Dullborough 
the serious bookseller’s,” where in my childhood I had 
studied the faces of numbers of gentlemen depicted in 
rostrums with a gaslight on each side of them, and cast- 


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131 


ing my eyes over the open pages of certain printed dis- 
courses there, I found a vast deal of aiming at jocosity 
and dramatic effect, even in them, — yes, verily, even on 
the part of one very wrathful expounder, who bitterly 
anathematized a poor little Circus. Similarly, in the 
reading provided for the young people enrolled in the 
Lasso of Love, and other excellent unions, I found the 
writers generally under a distressing sense that they 
must start (at all events) like story-tellers, and delude 
the young persons into the belief that they were going tc 
be interesting. As I looked in at this window for twenty 
minutes by the clock, I am in a position to offer a friendly 
remonstrance — not bearing on this particular point — 
to the designers and engravers of the pictures in those 
publications. Have they considered the awful conse- 
quences likely to flow from their representations of Vir- 
tue ? Have they asked themselves the question, whether 
the terriflc prospect of acquiring that fearful chubbiness 
of head, unwieldiness of arm, feeble dislocation of leg, 
crispiness of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, which 
they represent as inseparable from Goodness, may not 
tend to confirm sensitive waverers in Evil ? A most im- 
pressive example (if I had believed it) of what a Dust- 
man and a Sailor may come to when they mend their 
ways was presented to me in this same shop window. 
When they were leaning (they were intimate friends) 
against a post, drunk and reckless, with surpassingly 
bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads, they 
were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be 
agreeable men if they would not be beasts. But when 
they had got over their bad propensities, and when, as a 
consequence, their heads had swelled alarmingly, their 
hair had got so curly that it lifted their blown-out cheeks 
up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they never could do 
any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they 
never could do any sleep, they presented a spectacle cal- 
culated to plunge a timid nature into the depths of In- 
famy. 

But the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it 
last admonished me that I had stayed here long enough ; 
and I resumed my walk. 

I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was 


132 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


suddenly brought up by the sight of a man who got out 
of a little phaeton at the doctor’s door, and went into the 
doctor’s house. Immediately the air was filled with the 
scent of trodden grass, and the perspective of years 
opened, and at the end of it was a little likeness of this 
man keeping a wicket, and I said, ‘‘ God bless my soul ! 
Joe Specks ! ” 

Through many changes and much work, I had preserved 
a tenderness for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had 
made the acquaintance of Eoderick Eandom together, and 
had believed him to be no ruffian, but an ingenuous and en- 
gaging hero. Scorning to ask the boy left in the phaeton 
whether it was really Joe, and scorning even to read the 
brass plate on the door, — so sure was I, — I rang the 
bell, and informed the servant-maid that a stranger sought 
audience of Mr. Specks. Into a room, half surgery, half 
study, I was shown to await his coming ; and I found it, 
by a series of elaborate accidents, bestrewn with testimo- 
nies to Joe. Portrait of Mr. Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, 
silver cup from grateful patient to Mr. Specks, presenta- 
tion sermon from local clergyman, dedication poem from 
local poet, dinner-card from local nobleman, tract on bal- 
ance of power from local refugee, inscribed, Hommage de 
V auteur a Specks. 

When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed 
him with a smile that I was not a patient, he seemed 
rather at a loss to perceive any reason for smiling in con- 
nection with that fact, and inquired to what was he to 
attribute the honor ? I asked him, with another smile, 
could he remember me at all ? He had not (he said) that 
pleasure. I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of 
Mr. Specks, when he said reflectively, ‘‘ And yet there ’s 
a something too.” Upon that I saw a boyish light in his 
eyes that looked well ; and I asked him if he could in- 
form me, as a stranger who desired to know, and had not 
the means of reference at hand, what the name of the 
young lady was who married Mr. Eandom. Upon that 
he said, Narcissa ” ; and, after staring for a moment, 
called me by my name, shook me by the hand, and melted 
into a roar of laughter. “Why, of course, you’ll re- 
member Lucy Green,” he said, after we had talked a lit- 
tle. “Of course,” said I. “Whom do you think she 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


133 


married said he. I hazarded. ‘'Me/’ 

said Specks ; “and you shall see her.” So I saw her; 
and she was fat, and if all the hay in the world had been 
heaped upon her, it could scarcel;;^ have altered her face 
more than Time had altered it from my remembrance of 
the face that had once looked down upon me into the fra- 
grant dungeons of Seringapatam. But when her young- 
est child came in after dinner (for I dined with them, and 
we had no other company than Specks, Junior, Barrister- 
at-law, who went away, as soon as the clotli was re- 
moved, to look after the young lady to whom he was go- 
ing to be married next week), I saw again, in that little 
daughter, the little face of the hayfield unchanged, and it 
quite touched my foolish heart. We talked immensely, 
Specks and Mrs. Specks and I ; and we spoke of our old 
selves as though our old selves were dead and gone, and 
indeed, indeed they were, — dead and gone as the play- 
ing-field that had become a wilderness of rusty iron, and 
the property of S. E. R. 

Specks, however, illuminated Bullborough with the 
rays of interest that I wanted, and should otherwise have 
missed in it, and linked its present to its past with a 
highly agreeable chain. And in Specks’s society I had 
new occasion to observe what I had before noticed in 
similar communications among other men. All the school- 
fellows and others of old whom 1 inquired about had 
either done superlatively well or superlatively ill, — had 
either become uncertificated bankrupts, or been felonious, 
and got themselves transported, or had made great hits 
in life, and done wonders. And this is so commonly the 
case, that I never can imagine what becomes of all the 
mediocre people of people’s youth, — especially consider- 
ing that we find no lack of the species in our maturity. 
But I did not propound this difficulty to Specks, for no 
pause in the conversation gave me an occasion. Nor 
could I discover one single flaw in the good doctor, — 
when he reads this, he will receive in a friendly spirit the 
pleasantly meant record, — except that he had forgotten 
hi^ Roderick Random, and that he confounded Strap with 
Lieutenant Hatchway, who never knew Random, how^ 
soever intimate with Pickles. 

When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train 


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THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


at night (Specks had meant to go with me, but was inop- 
portunely called out), 1 was in a more charitable mood 
with Dullborough than I had been all day ; and yet in my 
heart I had loved it all day too. Ah ! who was I that I 
should quarrel with the town for being changed to me, 
when I myself had come back so changed to it I All my 
early readings and early imaginations dated from this 
place ; and I took them away so full of innocent con 
Btruction and guileless belief, and I brought them back so 
worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the 
worse I 


/ 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


135 


XIII. 


NIGHT WALKS. * 

Some years ago a temporary inability to sleep, refera- 
ble to a distressing impression, caused me to walk about 
the streets all night, for a series of several nights. The 
disordei might have taken a long time to conquer, if it 
had been faintly experimented on in bed ; but it was soon 
defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly 
after lying down, and going out, and coming home tired 
at sunrise. 

In the course of those nights I finished my education 
in a fair amateur experience of houselessness. My prin- 
cipal object being to get through the night, the pursuit 
of it brought me into sympathetic relations with people 
who have no other object every night in the year. 

The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, 
and cold. The sun not rising before half past five, the 
night perspective looked sufficiently long at half past 
twelve, which was about my time for confronting it. 

The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which 
it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed 
one of the first entertainments offered to the contempla- 
tion of us houseless people. It lasted about two hours. 
We lost a great deal of companionship when the late pub- 
lic-houses turned their lamps out, and when the potmen 
thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street ; but 
stray vehicles and stray people were left us after that. 
If we were very lucky, a policeman^s rattle sprang, and 
a fray turned up ; but, in general, surprisingly little of 
this diversion was provided. Except in the Haymarket, 
which is the worst kept part of London, and about 
Kent Street in the Borough, and along a portion of 
the line of the Old Kent Road, the peace was seldom 
violently broken. But it was always the case that Lon- 


186 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


don, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging* to 
it, had expiring-fits and starts of restlessness. After all 
seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half a dozen would 
surely follow ; and Houselessness even observed that 
intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically attracted 
towards each other ; so that we knew, when we saw one 
drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, 
that another drunken object would stagger up, before five 
minutes were out, to fraternize or fight with it. When we 
made a divergence from the regular species of drunkard, 
the thin-armed, puflP-faced, leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and 
encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent appear- 
ance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in soiled 
mourning. As the street experience in the night, so the 
street experience in the day ; the common folk who come 
unexpectedly into a little property come unexpectedly into 
a deal of liquor. 

At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn 
out, — the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from 
some late pieman or hot-potato man, — and London would 
sink to rest. And then the yearning of the houseless 
mind would be for any sign of company, any lighted place, 
any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up, 
— nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye 
looked out for lights in windows. 

Walking the streets under the pattering rain. House- 
lessness would walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing 
but the interminable tangle of streets, save at a corner, 
here and there, two policemen in conversation, or the ser- 
geant or inspector looking after his men. Now and then 
in the night, — but rarely, — Houselessness would be- 
come aware of a furtive head peering out of a doorway a 
few yards before him, and, coming up with the head, 
would find a man standing bolt upright to keep within the 
doorway’s shadow, and evidently intent upon no particu- 
lar service to society. Under a kind of fascination, and 
in a ghostly silence suitable to the time. Houselessness 
and this gentleman would eye one another from head to 
foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part mutually 
suspicious. Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, 
splash from pipes and water-spouts, and by and by the 
houseless shadow would fall upon the stones that pave 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


13 ? 


the way to Waterloo Bridge ; it being in the houseless 
mind to have a halfpennyworth of excuse for saying 

Good night to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse 
of his fire. A good fire and a good great-coat and a good 
woollen neck-shawl were comfortable things to see in con- 
junction with the toll-keeper ; also his brisk wakefulness 
was excellent company when he rattled the change of 
halfpence down upon that metal table of his, like a man 
who defied the night, with all its sorrowful thoughts, and 
did n’t care for the coming of dawn. There was need of 
encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, for the 
bridge was dreary. The chopped-up murdered man had 
not been lowered with a rope over the parapet when those 
nights were ; he was alive, and slept then quietly enough, 
most likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where he 
was to come. But the river had an awful look, the buildings 
on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflect- 
ed lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the 
spectres of suicides were holding them to show where 
they went down. The wild moon and clouds were as 
restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the 
very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie 
oppressively upon the river. 

Between the bridge and the two great theatres there 
was but the distance of a few hundred paces, so the thea- 
tres came next. Grim and black within, at night, those 
great dry Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the rows 
of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and the seats 
all empty. One would think that nothing in them knew 
itself at such a time but Yorick’s skull. In one of my 
night walks, as the church steeples were shaking the 
March winds and rain with- the strokes of Four, I passed 
the outer boundary of one of these great deserts, and en- 
tered it. With a dim lantern in my hand, I groped my 
well-known way to the stage, and looked over the orches- 
tra — which was like a great grave dug for a time of pes- 
tilence — into the void beyond. A dismal cavern of an 
immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like every- 
thing else, and nothing visible through mist and fog and 
space but tiers of winding-sheets. The ground at my feet 
where, when last there, I had seen the peasantry of Na- 
ples dancing among the vines, reckless of the burning 


138 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


mountain which threatened to overwhelm them, was now 
in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watch- 
fully lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly 
at it if it showed its forked tongue. A ghost of a watch- 
man, carrying a faint corpse candle, haunted the distant 
upper gallery and flitted away. Eetiring within the pro- 
scenium, and holding my light above my head towards the 
rolled-up curtain, — green no more, but black as ebony, 
— my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint 
indications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage. 
Methought I felt much as a diver might at the bottom of 
the sea. 

In those small hours when there was no movement in 
the streets, it afforded matter for reflection to take New- 
gate in the way, and, touching its rough stone, to think 
of the prisoners in their sleep, and then to glance in at 
the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and 
light of the watching turnkeys on the white wall. Not 
an inappropriate time, either, to linger by that wicked 
little Debtors’ Door, — shutting tighter than any other 
door one ever saw, — which has been Death’s Door to so 
many. In the days of the uttering of forged one-pound 
notes by people tempted up from the country, how many 
hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes — many 
quite innocent — swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent 
world, with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint 
Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes ! Is there any 
haunting of the Bank Parlor by the remorseful souls of 
old directors, in the nights of these later days, I wonder, 
or is it as quiet as this degenerate Aceldama of an Old 
Bailey ? 

To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times 
and bemoaning the present evil period, would be an easy 
next step, so I would take it, and would make my house- 
less circuit of the Bank, and give a thought to the treas- 
ure within ; likewise to the guard of soldiers passing the 
night there, and nodding over the fire. Next I went to 
Billingsgate, in some hope of market people ; but, it 
proving as yet too early, crossed London Bridge, and got 
down by the waterside on the Surrey shore among the 
buildings of the great brewery. There was plenty going 
on at the brewery ; and the reek, and the smell of grains. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


139 


and the rattling of the plump dray-horses at their man- 
gers, were capital company. Quite refreshed by having 
mingled with this good society, I made a new start with 
a new heart, setting the old King’s Bench Prison before 
me for my next object, and resolving, when I should 
come to the wall, to think of poor Horace Kinch, and 
the Dry Rot in men. 

A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and diffi- 
cult to detect the beginning of. It had carried Horace 
Kinch inside the wall of the old King’s Bench Prison, and 
it had carried him out with his feet foremost. He was a 
likely man to look at, in the prime of life, well to do, as 
clever as he needed to be, and popular among many 
friends. He was suitably married, and had healthy and 
pretty children. But, like some fair-looking houses or 
fair-looking ships, he took the Dry Rot. The first strong 
external revelation of the Dry Rot in men is a tendency 
to lurk and lounge ; to be at street corners without intel- 
ligible reason ; to be going anywhere when met ; to be 
about many places rather than at any ; to do nothing 
tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety 
of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. When 
this manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer 
will usually connect it with a vague impression once 
formed or received, that the patient was living a little too 
hard. He will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over 
in his mind, and form the terrible suspicion ‘‘ Dry Rot,” 
when he will notice a change for the worse in the pa- 
tient’s appearance, — a certain slovenliness and deteriora- 
tion, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor 
ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this succeeds a smell 
as of strong waters, in the morning ; to that, a looseness 
respecting money ; to that, a stronger smell as of strong 
waters, at all times ; to that, a looseness respecting 
everything ; to that, a trembling of the limbs, somnolen- 
cy, misery, and crumbling to pieces. As it is in wood, 
so it is in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound usury 
quite incalculable. A plank is found infected with it, 
and the whole structure is devoted. Thus it had been 
with the unhappy Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small 
subscription. Those who knew him had not nigh done 
saying, “So well off, so comfortably established, with 


140 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


such hope before him, — and yet, it is feared, with a 
slight touch of Dry Rot I when lo I the man was all Dry 
Rot and dust. 

From the dead wall associated on those houseless 
nights with this too-comrnon story, I chose next to wan- 
der by Bethlehem Hospital, — partly because it lay on 
my road round to Westminster, partly because I had a 
night fancy in my head which could be best pursued with- 
in sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy was this ; 
Are not the sane and the insane equal at night as the 
sane lie a dreaming ? Are not all of us outside this hos- 
pital, who dream, more or less in the condition of those 
inside it, every night of our lives ? Are we not nightly 
persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposter- 
ously with kings and queens, emperors and empresses, 
and notabilities of all sorts ? Do we not nightly jumble 
events and personages and times and places, as these do 
daily ? Are we not sometimes troubled by our own sleep- 
ing inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly try to account 
for them or excuse them, just as these do sometimes in re- 
spect of their waking delusions ? Said an afflicted man to 
me, when I was last in a hospital like this, “ Sir, I can fre- 
quently fly.^^ I was half ashamed to reflect that so could 
I — by night. Said a woman to me on the same occasion : 
“ Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine with me ; and 
her Majesty and I dine off peaches and maccaroni in our 
nightgowns, and his Royal Highness the Prince Consort 
does us the honor to make a third on horseback in a Field- 
Marshal’s uniform.” Could I refrain from reddening with 
consciousness when I remembered the amazing royal 
parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable 
viands I had put on table, and my extraordinary manner 
of conducting myself on those distinguished occasions ? 
I wonder that the great master who knew everything, 
when he called Sleep the death of each day’s life, did 
not call Dreams the insanity of each day’s sanity. 

By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and 
was again setting towards the river ; and in a short 
breathing-space I was on Westminster Bridge, regaling 
my houseless eyes with the external walls of the British 
Parliament, — the perfection of a stupendous institution, 
I know, and the admiration of all surrounding nations and 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


141 


succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps a little 
the better now and then for being pricked up to its work. 
Turning off into Old Palace Yard, the Courts of Law kept 
me company for a quarter of an hour ; hinting in low whis- 
pers what numbers of people they were keeping awake, 
and how intensely wretched and horrible they were ren- 
dering the small hours to unfortunate suitors. Westmin- 
ster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter 
of an hour ; suggesting a wonderful procession of its 
dead among the dark arches and pillars, each century 
more amazed by the century following it than by all the 
centuries going before. And indeed, in those houseless 
night walks, — which even included cemeteries where 
watchmen went round among the graves at stated times, 
and moved the telltale handle of an index which recorded 
that they had touched it at such an hour, — it was a sol- 
emn consideration what enormous hosts of dead belong to 
one old great city, and how, if they were raised while the 
living slept, there would not be the space of a pin’s point 
in all the streets and ways for the living to come out into. 
Not only that, but the vast armies of dead would over- 
fiow the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would 
stretch away all round it, God knows how far. 

When a church clock strikes on houseless ears in the 
dead of the night, it may be at first mistaken for com- 
pany, and hailed as such. But as the spreading circles 
of vibration, which you may perceive at such a time with 
great clearness, go opening out, for ever and ever after- 
wards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has sug- 
gested) in eternal space, the mistake is rectified, and the 
sense of loneliness is profounder. Once — it was after 
leaving the Abbey, and turning my face north — I came 
to the great steps of Saint Martin’s Church as the clock 
was striking three. Suddenly a thing that in a moment 
more I should have trodden upon without seeing rose up 
at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness 
struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I never 
heard. We then stood face to face, looking at one 
another, frightened by one another. The creature was 
like a beetle-browed, hair-lipped youth of twenty ; and it 
had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held together with 
one of its hands. It shivered from head to foot, and its 


142 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


teeth chattered; and as it stared at me, — perseciitoi', devil, 
ghost, whatever it thought me, — it made with its whin- 
ing mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a worried 
dog. Intending to give this ugly object money, I put 
out my hand to stay it, — for it recoiled as it whined and 
snapped, — and laid my hand upon its shoulder. Instantly 
it twisted out of its garment, like the young man in the 
New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags 
in my hand. 

Covent Garden Market, when it was market morning, 
was wonderful company. The great wagons of cabbages, 
with growers’ men and boys lying asleep under them, and 
with sharp dogs from market-garden neighborhoods look- 
ing after the whole, were as good as a party. But one 
of the worst night sights I know in London is to be found 
in the children who prowl about this place ; who sleep 
in the baskets, fight for the ofial, dart at any object they 
think they can lay their thieving hands on, dive under the 
carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetu- 
ally making a blunt pattering on the pavement of the 
Piazza with the rain of their naked feet. A painful and 
unnatural result comes of the comparison one is forced to 
institute between the growth of corruption as displayed 
in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the earth, 
and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all 
uncared for (except inasmuch as ever hunted) savages. 

There was early coffee to be got about Covent Garden 
Market ; and that was more company, — warm company, 
too, which was better. Toast of a very substantial qual- 
ity was likewise procurable, though the tousled-headed 
man who made it in an inner chamber within the coffee- 
room had n’t got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with 
sleep, that in every interval of toast and coffee he went 
off anew behind the partition into complicated cross-roads 
of choke and snore, and lost his way directly. Into one 
of these establishments (among the earliest) near Bow 
Street, there came one morning, as I sat over my house- 
less cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a high 
and long snufl-colored coat, and shoes, and, to the best 
of my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his 
hat a large cold meat pudding, — a meat pudding so 
large that it was a very tight fit, and brought the lining 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


143 


of the hat out with it. This mysterious man was known 
by his pudding ; for, on his entering, the man of sleep 
brought him a pint of hot tea. a small loaf, and a large 
knife and fork and plate. Left to himself in his box, he 
stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cut- 
ting it, stabbed it overhand, with the knife, like a mortal 
enemy ; then took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, 
tore the pudding asunder with his fingers, and ate it all 
up. The remembrance of this man with the pudding re- 
mains with me as the remembrance of the most spectral 
person my houselessness encountered. Twice only was 
I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as 
I should say, just out of bed, and presently going back 
to bed), take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the 
dagger, and eat his pudding all up. He was a man 
whose figure promised cadaverousness, but who had an 
excessively red face, though shaped like a horse^s. On 
the second occasion of my seeing him, he said huskily, to 
the man of sleep, Am I red to-night ? '' You are,^^ 

he uncompromisingly answered. “ My mother,^^ said the 
spectre, “was a red-faced woman that liked drink, and I 
looked at her hard when she laid in her coffin, and I took 
the complexion.'^ Somehow the pudding seemed an un- 
wholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in its 
way no more. 

When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, 
a railway terminus with the morning mails coming in was 
remunerative company. But, like most of the company to 
be had in this world, it lasted only a very short time. 
The station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters 
would emerge from places of concealment, the cabs and 
tiucks would rattle to their places (the post-office carts 
were already in theirs), and finally the bell would strike 
up, and the train would come banging in. But there were 
few passengers and little luggage, and everything scuttled 
away with the greatest expedition. The locomotive post- 
offices, with their great nets, — as if they had been drag- 
ging the country for bodies, — would fly open as to their 
doors, and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted 
clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters ; the 
engine would blow and heave and perspire, like an engine 
wiping its forehead, and saying what a run it had had ; 


141 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


and within ten minutes the lamps were out, and I was 
houseless and alone again. 

But now there were driven cattle on the high-road near, 
wanting (as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of 
stone walls, and squeeze themselves through six inches^ 
width of iron railing, and getting their heads down (also 
as cattle always do) for tossing purchase at quite imagi- 
nary dogs, and giving themselves and every devoted crea- 
ture associated with them a most extraordinary amount 
of unnecessary trouble. Now, too, the conscious gas be- 
gan to grow pale with the knowledge that daylight was 
coming, and straggling workpeople were already in the 
streets ; and as waking life had become extinguished with 
the last pieman’s sparks, so it began to be rekindled with 
the fires of the first street-corner breakfast-sellers. And 
so, by faster and faster degrees, until the last degrees 
were very fast, the day came, and I was tired, and could 
sleep. And it is not, as I used to think, going home at 
such times, the least wonderful thing in London, that, in 
the real desert region of the night, the houseless wander- 
er is alone there. I knew well enough where to find Vice 
and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen ; but they 
were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many 
miles upon miles of streets in which it could and did have 
its own solitary way. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


145 


XIV. 


CHAMBERS. = 

Having occasion to transact some business with a so- 
licitor who occupies a highly suicidal set of chambers in 
Gray^s Inn, I afterwards took a turn in the large square 
of that stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing, with congen- 
ial surroundings, my experiences of Chambers. 

I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just 
left. They were an upper set on a rotten staircase, with 
a mysterious bunk or bulkhead on the landing outside 
them, of a rather nautical and Screw Collier-like appear- 
ance than otherwise, and painted an intense black. Many 
dusty years have passed since the appropriation of this 
Davy Joneses locker to any purpose ; and during the 
whole period within the memory of living man, it has 
been hasped and padlocked. I cannot quite satisfy my 
mind whether it was originally meant for the reception of 
coals or bodies, or as a place of temporary security for the 
plunder ‘footed by laundresses; but I incline to the 
last opinion. It is about breast high, and usually serves 
as a bulk for defendants in reduced circumstances to lean 
against and ponder at, when they come on the hopeful er- 
rand of trying to make an arrangement without money, — 
under which auspicious circumstances it mostly happens 
that the legal gentleman they want to see is much engaged, 
and they pervade the staircase for a considerable period. 
Against this opposing bulk, in the absurdest manner, the 
tomb-like outer door of the solicitor's chambers (which is 
also of an intense black) stands in dark ambush, half open 
and half shut, all day. The solicitor's apartments are 
three in number ; consisting of a slice, a cell, and a 
wedge. The slice is assigned to the two clerks, the cell 
is occupied by the principal, and the wedge is devoted to 
stray paper’s, old game baskets from the country, a wash- 
10 


146 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ing-stand, and a model of a patent Ship’s Caboose which 
was exhibited in Chancery at the commencement of the 
present century on an application for an injunction to 
restrain infringement. At about half past nine on every 
week-day morning, the younger of the two clerks (who, 
I have reason to believe, leads the fashion at Pentonville 
in the articles of pipes and shirts) may be found knocking 
the dust out of his oflScial door-key on the bunk or locker 
before mentioned ; and so exceedingly subject to dust is 
his key, and so very retentive of that superfluity, that in 
exceptional summer weather, when a ray of sunlight has 
fallen on the locker in my presence, I have noticed its 
inexpressive countenance to be deeply marked by a kind 
of Bramah erysipelas or small-pox. 

This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, 
when I have had restless occasion to make inquiries or 
leave messages after oflBce hours) is under the charge of 
a lady named Sweeney, in figure extremely like an old 
family umbrella, whose dwelling confronts a dead wall in 
a court off Gray’s Inn Lane, and who is usually fetched 
into the passage of that bower, when wanted, from some 
neighboring home of industry, which has the curious prop- 
erty of imparting an inflammatory appearance to her visage. 
Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of professed laundresses, 
and is the compiler of a remarkable manuscript volume 
entitled Mrs. Sweeney’s Book,” from which much curi- 
ous statistical information may be gathered respecting the 
high prices and small uses of soda, soap, sand, firewood, 
and other such articles. I have created a legend in my 
mind, — and consequently I believe it with the utmost 
pertinacity, — that the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket- 
porter under the Honorable Society of Gray’s Inn, and 
that, in consideration of his long and valuable services, 
Mrs. Sweeney was appointed to her present post. For, 
though devoid of personal charms, I have observed this 
lady to exercise a fascination over the elderly ticket- 
porter mind (particularly under the gateway, and in 
corners and entries), which I can only refer to her being 
one of the fraternity, yet not competing with it. All that 
need be said concerning this set of chambers is said, when 
I have added that it is in a large double house in Gray’s 
Inn Square, very much out of repair, and that the outer 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


147 


portal is ornamented in a hideous manner with certain 
stone remains, which have the appearance of the dismem- 
bered bust, torso, and limbs of a petrified bencher. 

Indeed, I look upon Gray’s Inn generally as one of 
the most depressing institutions in brick and mortar 
known to the children of men. Can anything be more 
dreary than its arid Square, Sahara Desert of the law, 
with the ugly old tiled-topped tenements, the dirty win- 
dows, the bills To Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed 
like gravestones, the crazy gateway giving upon the 
filthy Lane, the scowling, iron-barred, prison-like passage 
into Verulam Buildings, the mouldy, red-nosed ticket- 
porters with little cofiin-plates, and why with aprons, the 
dry, hard, atomy-like appearance of the whole dust-heap ? 
When my uncommercial travels tend to this dismal spot, 
my comfort is its rickety state. Imagination gloats over 
the fulness of time when the staircases shall have quite 
tumbled down, — they are daily wearing into an ill- 
savored powder, but have not quite tumbled down yet ; 
when the last old prolix bencher, all of the olden time, 
shall have been got out of an upper window by means of 
a Fire Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn Union ; 
when the last clerk shall have engrossed the last parch- 
ment behind the last splash on the last of the mud-stained 
windows, which, all through the miry year, are pilloried 
out of recognition in Gray’s Inn Lane. Then shall a 
squalid little trench, with rank grass and a pump in it, 
lying between the coffee-house and South Square, be 
wholly given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have 
its f;mpire divided between those animals and a few brief- 
less bipeds, — surely called to the Bar by voices of de- 
ceiving spirits, seeing that they are wanted there by no 
mortal, — who glance down, with eyes better glazed than 
their casements, from their dreary and lack-lustre rooms. 
Then shall the way Nor’ westward, now lying under a 
short, grim colonnade where in summer-time pounce flies 
from law-stationering windows into the eyes of laymen, 
be choked with rubbish, and happily become impassable. 
Then shall the gardens where turf, trees, and gravel wear 
a legal livery of black run rank, and pilgrims go to Gor- 
hambury to see Bacon’s effigy as he sat, and not come 
here (which, in truth, they seldom do) to see where he 


148 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


walked. Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor 
of periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind 
the Holborn Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the 
ruins of Carthage, who has sat heavy on a thousand mil- 
lion of similes. 

At one period of my uncommercial career, I much fre- 
quented another set of chambers in Gray’s Inn Square. 
They were what is familiarly called “ a top set,” and all 
the eatables and drinkables introduced into them acquired 
a flavor of Cockloft, I have known an unopened Stras- 
burg pate fresh from Fortnum and Mason’s, to draw in 
this cockloft tone through its crockery dish, and become 
penetrated with cockloft to the core of its inmost truffle 
in three quarters of an hour. This, however, was not the 
most curious feature of those chambers ; that consisted 
in the profound conviction entertained by my esteemed 
friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean. Whether 
it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted 
to him by Mrs. Miggot, the laundress, I never could 
ascertain. But I believe he would have gone to the 
stake upon the question. Now they were so dirty that I 
could take off the distinctest impression of my figure on 
any article of furniture by merely lounging upon it foi 
a few moments ; and it used to be a private amusement 
of mine to print myself off — if I may use the expression 
— all over the rooms. It was the first large circulation 
I had. At other times I have accidentally shaken a win- 
dow-curtain while in animated conversation with Parkle, 
and struggling insects which were certainly red, and were 
certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my 
hand. Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound body 
and soul to the superstition that they were clean. He 
used to say, when congratulated upon them, “ Well, they 
are not like chambers in one respect, you know ; they are 
clean.” Concurrently, he had an idea which he could 
never explain, that Mrs. Miggot was in some way con- 
nected with the Church. When he was in particularly 
good spirits, he used to believe that a deceased uncle of 
hers had been a Dean ; when he was poorly and low, he 
believed that her brother had been a Curate. I and Mrs. 
Miggot (she was a genteel woman) were on confidential 
terms, but I never knew her to commit herself to an;y 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


149 


distinct assertion on the subject ; she merely claimed a 
proprietorship in the Church, by looking, when it was 
mentioned, as if the reference awakened the slumbering 
Past, and were personal. It may have been his amiable 
confidence in Mrs. Miggot’s better days that inspired my 
friend with his delusion respecting the chambers ; but 
he never wavered in his fidelity to it for a moment, 
though he wallowed in dirt seven years. 

Two of the windows of these chambers looked down 
into the garden ; and we have sat up there together, many 
a summer evening, saying how pleasant it was, and talk- 
ing of many things. To my intimacy with that top set 
I am indebted for three of my liveliest personal impres- 
sions of the loneliness of life in chambers. They shall 
follow here, in order ; first, second, and third. 

First. My Gray’s Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of 
his legs, and it became seriously inflamed. Not knowing 
of his indisposition, I was on my way to visit him as 
usual, one summer evening, when I was much surprised 
by meeting a lively leech in Field Court, Gray’s Inn, 
seemingly on his way to the West End of London. As 
the leech was alone, and was of course unable to explain 
his position, even if he had been inclined to do so (which 
he had not the appearance of being), I passed him, and 
went on. Turning the corner of Gray’s Inn Square, I 
was beyond expression amazed by meeting another leech, 
— also entirely alone, and also proceeding in a westerly 
direction, though with less decision of purpose. Ruminat- 
ing on this extraordinary circumstance, and endeavoring 
to remember whether I had ever read, in the Philosophi- 
cal Transactions, or any work on Natural History, of a 
migration of Leeches, I ascended to the top set, past the 
dreary series of closed outer doors of oiOSces, and an 
empty set or two, which intervened between that lofty 
region and the surface. Entering my friend’s rooms, I 
found him stretched upon his back, like Prometheus 
Bound, with a perfectly demented ticket-porter in attend- 
ance on him instead of the Vulture ; which helpless indi- 
vidual, who was feeble and frightened, had (my friend 
explained to me, in great choler) been endeavoring for 
some hours to apply leeches to his leg, and as yet had 
only got on two out of twenty. To this unfortunate*' s 


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THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


distraction between a damp cloth, on which he had placed 
the leeches to freshen them, and the wrathful adjurations 
of my friend to ‘‘ Stick ’em on, sir I ” I referred the phe- 
nomenon I had encountered ; the rather as two fine speci- 
mens were at that moment going out at the door, while 
a general insurrection of the rest was in progress on the 
table. After a while our united efforts prevailed ; and, 
when the leeches came off*, and had recovered their spirits, 
we carefully tied them up in a decanter. But I never 
heard more of them than that they were all gone next 
morning, and that the Out-of-door young man of Bickle 
Bush and Bodger, on the ground-floor, had been bitten 
and blooded by some creature not identified. They never 
took ” on Mrs. Miggot, the laundress ; but I have al- 
ways preserved fresh the belief that she unconsciously 
carried several about her, until they gradually found 
openings in life. 

Second. On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, 
and on the same floor, there lived a man of law who pur- 
sued his business elsewhere, and used those chambers as 
his place of residence. For three or four years Parkle 
rather knew of him than knew him ; but after that — for 
Englishmen — short pause of consideration, they began 
to speak. Parkle exchanged words with him in his pri- 
vate character only, and knew nothing of his business 
ways or means. He was a man a good deal about town, 
but always alone. We used to remark to one another, 
that, although we often encountered him in theatres, con- 
cert-rooms, and similar public places, he was always alone. 
Yet he was not a gloomy man, and was of a decidedly 
conversational turn ; insomuch that he would sometimes 
of an evening lounge, with a cigar in his mouth, half in 
and half out of Parkle’s rooms, and discuss the topics of 
the day by the hour. He used to hint on these occasions 
that he had four faults to find with life : firstly, that it 
obliged a man to be always winding up his watch ; sec- 
ondly, that London was too small ; thirdly, that it there- 
fore wanted variety ; fourthly, that there was too much 
dust in it. There was so much dust in his own faded 
chambers, certainly, that they reminded me of a sepul- 
chre, furnished in prophetic anticipation of the present 
time, which had newly been brought to light, after having 


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163 


remained buried a few thousand years. One dry, hot, 
autumn evening, at twilight, this man, being then five 
years turned of fifty, looked in upon Parkle in his usual 
lounging way, with his cigar in his mouth as usual, and 
said, ‘‘ I am going out of town.^^ As he never went out 
of town, Parkle said, ‘‘0, indeed! At last?^^ '‘Yes,^^ 
says he, at last. For what is a man to do ? London is 
so small ! If you go West, you come to Hounslow. If 
you go East, you come to Bow. If you go South, there ^s 
Brixton or Norwood. If you go North, you can^t get rid 
of Barnet. Then the monotony of all the streets, streets, 
streets, — and of all the roads, roads, roads, — and the 
dust, dust, dust I When he had said this, he wished 
Parkle a good evening, but came back again, and said, 
with his watch in his hand, 0, I really cannot go on 
winding up this watch over and over again ; I wish you 
would take care of it.^^ So Parkle laughed and consent- 
ed, and the man went out of town. The man remained 
out of town so long that his letter-box became choked, 
and no more letters could be got into it, and they began 
to be left at the lodge, and to accumulate there. At last 
the head-porter decided, on conference with the steward, 
to use his master-key and look into the chambers, and give 
them the benefit of a whiff of air. Then it was found that 
he had hanged himself to his bedstead, and had left this 
written memorandum : “I should prefer to be cut down 
by my neighbor and friend (if he will allow me to call him 
so), H. Parkle, Esq.^^ This was the end of Parkle^s oc- 
cupancy of chambers. He went into lodgings immedi- 
ately. 

Third. While Parkle lived in Gray^s Inn, and I myself 
was uncommercially preparing for the Bar, — which is 
done, as everybody knows, by having a frayed old gown 
put on in a pantry by an old woman in a chronic state of 
Saint Anthony^s fire and dropsy, and, so decorated, bolt- 
ing a bad dinner in a party of four, whereof each individu- 
al mistrusts the other three, — I say, while these things 
were, there was a certain elderly gentleman who lived in 
a court of the Temple, and was a great judge and lover 
of port wine. Every day he dined at his club, and drank 
his bottle or two of port wine, and every night came home 
to the Temple, and went to bed in his lonely chambers. 


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THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


This had gone on many years without variation, when one 
night he had a fit on coming home, and fell, and cut his 
head deep, but partly recovered, and groped about in the 
dark to find the door. When he was afterwards discov- 
ered dead, it was clearly established by the marks of his 
hands about the room that he must have done so. Now 
this chanced on the night of Christmas eve, and over him 
lived a young fellow who had sisters and young country 
friends, and who gave them a little party that night, in 
the course of which they played at Blindman’s Buff. They 
played that game, for their greater sport, by the light of 
the fire only ; and once, when they were all quietly rust- 
ling and stealing about, and the blindman was trying to pick 
out the prettiest sister (for which I am far from blaming 
him), somebody cried, Hark ! the man below must be playing 
Blindman^s Buff by himself to-night I They listened, and 
they heard sounds of some one falling about and stumbling 
against furniture ; and they all laughed at the conceit, and 
went on with their play, more light-hearted and merry 
than ever. Thus those two so different games of life and 
death were played out together, blindfold, in the two sets 
of chambers. 

Such are the occurrences which, coming to my knowl- 
edge, imbued me long ago with a strong sense of the 
loneliness of chambers. There was a fantastic illustration 
to much the same purpose implicitly believed by a strange 
sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I had not quite 
arrived at legal years of discretion, though I was already 
in the uncommercial line. 

This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had 
seen the world in divers irreconcilable capacities, — had 
been an officer in a South American regiment among other 
odd things, — but had not achieved much in any way of 
life, and was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied cham- 
bers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn ; his name, how- 
ever, was not upon the door, or door-post, but in lieu of 
it stood the name of a friend who had died in the cham- 
bers, and had given him the furniture. The story arose 
out of the furniture, and was to this effect : Let the former 
holder of the chambers, whose name was still upon the 
door and door-post, be Mr. Testator. 

Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


153 


he had but very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and 
none for his sitting-room. He had lived some wintry 
months in this condition, and had found it very bare and 
cold. One night, past midnight, when he sat writing, and 
still had writing to do that must be done before he went 
to bed, he found himself out of coals. He had coals down 
stairs, but had never been to his cellar ; however, the 
cellar key was on his mantel-shelf, and if he went down, 
and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly assume the 
coals in that cellar to be his. As to his laundress, she 
lived among the coal-wagons and Thames watermen, — 
for there were Thames watermen at that time, — in some 
unknown rat-hole by the river, down lanes and alleys on 
the other side of the Strand. As to any other person to 
meet him or obstruct him, Lyons Inn was dreaming, 
drunk, maudlin, moody, betting, brooding over bill dis- 
counting or renewing, — asleep or awake, minding its 
own afi'airs. Mr. Testator took his coal-scuttle in one 
hand, his candle and key in the other, and descended to 
the dismallest underground dens of Lyons Inn, where the 
late vehicles in the streets became thunderous, and all the 
water-pipes in the neighborhood seemed to have Mac- 
beth^s Amen sticking in their throats, and to be trying to 
get it out. After groping here and there among low 
doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length came to a 
door with a rusty padlock which his key fitted. Getting 
the door open with much trouble, and looking in, he 
found no coals, but a confused pile of furniture. Alarmed 
by this intrusion on another man’s property, he locked the 
door again, found his own cellar, filled his scuttle, and 
returned up stairs. 

But the furniture he had seen ran on castors across and 
across Mr. Testator’s mind incessantly, when, in the 
chill hour of five in the morning, he got to bed. He 
particularly wanted a table to write at, and a table ex- 
pressly made to be written at had been the piece of fur- 
niture in the foreground of the heap. When his laundress 
emerged from her burrow in the morning to make his 
kettle boil, he artfully led up to the subject of cellars and 
furniture ; but the two ideas had evidently no connection 
in her mind. When she left him, and he sat at his 
breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he recalled the 


154 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


imsty state of the padlock, and inferred that the furniture 
must have been stored in the cellars for a long time, — 
was perhaps forgotten, — owner dead, perhaps ? After 
thinking it over a few days, in the course of which he 
could pump nothing out of Lyons Inn about the furniture, 
he became desperate, and resolved to borrow that table. 
He did so that night. He had not had the table long, 
when he determined to borrow an easy-chair ; he had not 
had that long, when he made up his mind to borrow a 
bookcase ; then a couch ; then a carpet and rug. By 
that time, he felt he was ‘‘ in furniture stepped in so far 
as that it could be no worse to borrow it all. Conse- 
quently he borrowed it all, and locked up the cellar for 
good. He had always locked it after every visit. He 
had carried up every separate article in the dead of the 
night, and, at the best, had felt as wicked as a Kesurrec- 
tion Man. Every article was blue and furry when 
brought into his rooms ; and he had had, in a murderous 
and guilty sort of way, to polish it up while London 
slept. 

Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or 
three years or more, and gradually lulled himself into the 
opinion that the furniture was his own. This was his 
convenient state of mind when, late one night, a step 
came up the stairs, and a hand passed over his door 
feeling for his knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap 
was rapped that might have been a spring in Mr. Testa- 
tor’s easy-chair to shoot him out of it 7* so promptly was 
it attended with that effect. 

With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the 
door, and found there a very pale and very tall man; a 
man who stooped ; a man with very high shoulders, a 
very narrow chest, and a very red nose ; a shabby-gen- 
teel man. He was wrapped in a long, threadbare, black 
coat, fastened up the front with more pins than buttons, 
and under his arm he squeezed an umbrella without a 
handle, as if he were playing bagpipes. He said, I 
ask your pardon, but can you tell me — ” and stopped ; 
his eyes resting on some object within the chambers. 

'' Can I tell you what ? ” asked Mr. Testator, noting 
this stoppage with quick alarm. 

I ask your pardon,” said the stranger, “ but — this is 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


155 


not the inquiry I was going to make — dol see in there 
any small article of property belonging to me?” 

Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was 
not aware — when the visitor slipped past him into the 
chambers. There, in a goblin way which froze Mr. 
Testator to the marrow, he examined, first, the writing- 
table, and said, “ Mine ” ; then the easy-chair, and said, 
^^Mine^'; then the bookcase, and said, ‘'Mine^^; then 
turned up a corner of the carpet, and said, “ Mine ” ; in 
a word, inspected every item of furniture from the cellar, 
in succession, and said, Mine I ” Towards the end of 
this investigation Mr. Testator perceived that he was sod- 
den with liquor, and that the liquor was gin. He was 
not unsteady with gin, either in his speech or carriage ; 
but he was stiff with gin in both particulars. 

Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to 
his making out of the story) the possible consequences of 
what he had done in recklessness and hardihood fiashed 
upon him in their fulness for the first time. When they 
had stood gazing at one another for a little while, he 
tremulously began : — 

“ Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, com- 
pensation, and restitution are your due. They shall be 
yours. Allow me to entreat that, without temper, with- 
out even natural irritation on your part, we may have a 
little — 

Drop of something to drink,^^ interposed the stranger. 

I am agreeable. 

Mr. Testator had intended to say, “ a little quiet con- 
versation,^^ but with great relief of mind adopted the 
amendment. He produced a decanter of gin, and was 
bustling about for hot water and sugar, when he found 
that his visitor had already drunk half of the decanter^s 
contents. With hot water and sugar the visitor drank 
the remainder before he had been an hour in the chambers 
by the chimes of the church of St. Mary in the Strand ; 
and during the process he frequently whispered to him- 
self, “ Mine I ” 

The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was 
to follow it, the visitor rose and said, with increased stiff- 
ness, At what hour of the morning, sir, will it be con- 
venient ? ” Mr. Testator hazarded, At ten ? ” “ Sir,'’ 


156 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


said the visitor, “ at ten, to the moment, I shall be here.^’ 
He then contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, 
and said, “ God bless you I How is your wife ? Mr. 
Testator (who never had a wife) replied, with much feel- 
ing, “ Deeply anxious, poor soul ! but otherwise well.^' 
The visitor thereupon turned and went away, and fell twice 
in going down stairs. From that hour he was never 
heard of. Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral illusion 
of conscience, or a drunken man who had no business 
there, or the drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with 
a transitory gleam of memory ; whether he got safe home, 
or had no home to get to ; whether he died of liquor on 
the way, or lived in liquor ever afterwards, — he never 
was heard of more. This was the story, received with 
the furniture, and held to be as substantial, by its second 
possessor in an upper set of chambers in grim Lyons fnn. 

It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they 
must have been built for chambers, to have the right kind 
of loneliness. You may make a great dwelling-house 
very lonely, by isolating suites of rooms, and calling them 
chambers, but you cannot make the true kind of loneli- 
ness. In dwelling-houses there have been family festi- 
vals ; children have grown in them, girls have bloomed 
into women in them, courtships and marriages have taken 
place in them. True chambers never were young, child- 
ish, maidenly ; never had dolls in them, or rocking-horses, 
or christenings, or betrothals, or little coffins. Let Gray^s 
Inn identify the child who first touched hands and hearts 
with Robinson Crusoe in any one of its many sets,^^ and 
that child^s little statue, in white marble with a golden 
inscription, shall be at its service, at my cost and charge, 
as a drinking-fountain for the spirit, to freshen its thirsty 
square. Let Lincoln’s produce from all its houses a 
twentieth of the procession derivable from any dwelling- 
house, one twentieth of its age, of fair young brides who 
married for love and hope, not settlements, and all the 
Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward be kept in nosegays 
for nothing, on application to the writer hereof. It is not 
denied that on the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of the 
streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about 
Bedford Row, or James Street of that ilk (a grewsome 
place), or anywhere among the neighborhoods that have 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


157 


done flowering and have run to seed, you may find 
Chambers replete with the accommodations of Solitude, 
Closeness, and Darkness, where you may be as low- 
spirited as in the genuine article, and might be as easily 
murdered, with the placid reputation of having merely 
gone down to the seaside. But the many waters of life 
did run musical in those dry channels once ; — among the 
Inns, never. The only popular legend known in relation 
to any one of the dull family of Inns is a dark Old Bailey 
whisper concerning Clementes and importing how the 
black creature who holds the sundial there was a negro 
who slew his master, and built the dismal pile out of the 
contents of his strong box, — for which architectural 
offence alone he ought to have been condemned to live in 
it. But what populace would waste fancy upon such a 
place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard’s Inn, or any 
of the shabby crew ? 

The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to bo 
had in its entirety out of and away from the genuine 
Chambers. Again, it is not denied that you may be robbed 
elsewhere. Elsewhere you may have — for money — dis- 
honesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and profound inca- 
pacity. But the veritable shining-red-faced, shameless 
laundress, — the true Mrs. Sweeney, in figure, color, tex- 
ture, and smell like the old damp family umbrella, — the 
tip-top complicated abomination of stockings, spirits, bon- 
net, limpness, looseness, and larceny, — is only to be 
drawn at the fountain-head. Mrs. Sweeney is beyond the 
reach of individual art. It requires the united efforts of 
several men to insure that great result, and it is only de- 
veloped in perfection under an Honorable Society and in 
an Inn of Court. 


J58 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XV. 


nurse’s stories. 

There are not many places that I find it more agree* 
able to revisit, when I am in an idle mood, than some 
places to which I have never been. For my acquaintance 
with those spots is of such long standing, and has ripened 
into an intimacy of so affectionate a nature, that I take a 
particular interest in assuring myself that they are un- 
changed. 

I never was in Kobinson Crusoe^s Island, yet I fre- 
quently return there. The colony he established on it 
soon faded away, and it is uninhabited by any descend- 
ants of the grave and courteous Spaniards, or of Will 
Atkins and the other mutineers, and has relapsed into its 
original condition. Not a twig of its wicker houses re- 
mains, its goats have long run wild again, its screaming 
parrots would darken the sun with a cloud of many 
flaming colors if a gun were fired there, no face is evei 
reflected in the waters of the little creek which Friday 
swam across when pursued by his two brother cannibals 
with sharpened stomachs. After comparing notes with 
other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island, 
and conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself 
that it contains no vestige of Mr. Atkinses domesticity or 
theology ; though his track on the memorable evening of 
his landing to set his captain ashore, when he was de- 
coyed about and round about until it was dark, and his 
boat was stove, and his strength and spirits failed him, is 
yet plainly to be traced. So is the hill-top on which Rob- 
inson was struck dumb with joy when the reinstated cap- 
tain pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of the 
shore, that was to bear him away, in the nine-and- 
twentieth year of his seclusion in that lonely place. So 
is the sandy beach on which the memorable footstep was 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


159 


impressed, and where the savages hauled up their canoes 
when they came ashore for those dreadful public dinners, 
which led to a dancing worse than speech-making. So is 
the cave where the flaring eyes of the old goat made 
such a goblin appearance in the dark. So is the site of 
the hut where Robinson lived with the dog and the parrot 
and the cat, and where he endured those first agonies of 
solitude, which — strange to say — never involved any 
ghostly fancies ; a circumstance so very remarkable, that 
perhaps he left out something in writing his record ? 
Round hundreds of such objects, hidden in the dense 
tropical foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore ; and 
over them the tropical sky, saving in the short rainy sea- 
son, shines bright and cloudless. 

Neither was I ever belated among wolves, on the bor- 
ders of France and Spain ; nor did I ever, when night 
was closing in and the ground was covered with snow, 
draw up my little company among some felled trees which 
served as a breastwork, and there fire a train of gunpow- 
der so dexterously that suddenly we had three or four 
score blazing wolves illuminating the darkness around us. 
Nevertheless, I occasionally go back to that dismal region, 
and perform the feat again ; when, indeed, to smell the 
singeing and the frying of the wolves afire, and to see 
them setting one another alight as they rush and tumble, 
and to behold them rolling in the snow vainly attempting 
to put themselves out, and to hear their bowlings taken 
up by all the echoes as well as by all the unseen wolves 
within the woods, makes me tremble. 

I was never in the robbers^ cave, where Gil Bias lived ; 
but I often go back there and find the trap-door just as 
heavy to raise as it used to be while that wicked old dis- 
abled Black lies everlastingly cursing in bed. I was nev- 
er in Don Quixote^s study, where he read his books of 
chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary giants, and 
then refreshed himself with great draughts of water ; yet 
you could n't move a book in it without my knowledge 
or with my consent. I was never (thank Heaven I) in 
company with the little old woman who hobbled out of the 
chest, and told the merchant Abudah to go in search of 
the Talisman of Oromanes : yet I make it my business to 
know that she is well preserved and as intolerable as 


160 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ever. I was never at the school where the boy Horatio 
Nelson got out of bed to steal the pears, not because he 
wanted any, but because every other boy was afraid ; yet 
I have several times been back to this Academy, to see 
him let down out of window with a sheet. So with 
Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brobdingnag (which has the 
curious fate of being usually misspelt when written), and 
Liliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, and Abyssinia, and the 
Ganges, and the North Pole, and many hundreds of pla^ 
ces, — I was never at them ; yet it is an affair of my life 
to keep them intact, and I am always going back to 
them. 

But when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the 
associations of my childhood as recorded in previous pages 
of these notes, my experience in this wise was made quite 
inconsiderable and of no account by the quantity of places 
and people — utterly impossible places and people, but 
none the less alarmingly real — that I found I had been 
introduced to by my nurse before I was six years old, and 
used to be forced to go back to at night without at all 
wanting to go. If we all knew our own minds (in a more 
enlarged sense than the popular acceptation of that 
phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses responsible 
for most of the dark corners we are forced to go back to 
against our wills. 

The first diabolical character who intruded himself on 
my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dull- 
borough) was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch 
must have been an offshoot of the Blue-Beard family, but 
I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. 
His warning name would seem to have awakened no gen- 
eral prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the 
best society and possessed immense wealth. Captaiu 
Murderer^ s mission was matrimony, and the gratification 
of a cannibal appetite with tender brides. On his mar- 
riage morning, he always caused both sides of the way to 
church to be planted with curious fiowers ; and when his 
bride said, ‘‘ Dear Captain Murderer, I never saw flowers 
like these before ; what are they called ? he answered, 

They are called Garnish for house-lamb,’^ and laughed 
at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner, disqui- 
eting the minds of the noble bridal company with a very 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


161 


sharp show of teeth, then displayed for the first time. He 
made love in a coach and six, and married in a coach and 
twelve ; and all his horses were milk-white horses with 
one red spot on the back, which he caused to be hidden 
by the harness. For the spot would come there, though 
every horse was milk-white when Captain Murderer 
bought him. And the spot was young bride^s blood. 
(To this terrific point I am indebted for my first personal 
experience of a shudder and cold beads on the forehead.) 
When Captain Murderer had made an end of feasting and 
revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and was 
alone with his wife on the day month after their marriage, 
it was his whimsical custom to produce a golden rolling- 
pin and a silver pie-board. Now there was this special 
feature in the Captain’s courtships, that he always asked 
if the young lady could make pie-crust ; and if she 
could n’t by nature or education, she was taught. Well. 
When the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden 
rolling-pin and silver pie-board, she remembered this, and 
turned up her laced-silk sleeves to make a pie. The Cap- 
tain brought out a silver pie-dish of immense capacity, 
and the Captain brought out flour and butter and eggs, 
and all things needful, except the inside of the pie ; of 
materials for the staple of the pie itself, the Captain 
brought out none. Then said the lovely bride, Dear 
Captain Murderer, what pie is this to be ? ” He replied, 
“ A meat pie.” Then said the lovely bride, Dear Cap- 
tain Murderer, I see no meat.” The Captain humorously 
retorted, “Look in the glass.” She looked in the glass, 
but still she saw no meat ; and then the Captain roared 
with laughter, and, suddenly frowning and drawing his 
sword, bade her roll out the crust. So she rolled out 
the crust, dropping large tears upon it all the time because 
he was so cross *, and when she had lined the dish with 
crust, and had cut the crust all ready to fit the top, the 
Captain called out, “ I see the meat in the glass ! ” And 
the bride looked up at the glass just in time to see 
the Captain cutting her head off ; and he chopped her in 
pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in 
the pie, and sent it to the baker’s, and ate it all, and 
picked the bones. 

Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospeiing 
11 


162 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


exceedingly, until he came to choose a bride from two 
twin sisters, and at first did n’t know which to choose. 
For, though one was fair and the other dark, they were 
both equally beautiful. But the fair twin loved him, 
and the dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one. 
The dark twin would have prevented the marriage if she 
could, but she could n’t ; however, on the night before it, 
much suspecting Captain Murderer, she stole out, and 
climbed his garden wall, and looked in at his window 
through a chink in the shutter, and saw him having his 
teeth filed sharp. Next day she listened all day, and 
heard him make his joke about the house-lamb. And 
that day month he had the paste rolled out, and cut the 
fair twin’s head off, and chopped her in pieces, and pep- 
pered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and 
sent it to the baker’s, and ate it all, and picked the 
bones. 

Now the dark twin had had her suspicions much in- 
creased by the filing of the Captain’s teeth, and again by 
the house-lamb joke. Putting all things together, when he 
gave out that her sister was dead, she divined the truth, 
and determined to be revenged. So she went up to Cap- 
tain Murderer’s house, and knocked at the knocker, and 
pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the door, 
said : “ Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next ; for I al- 
ways loved you, and was jealous of my sister.” The Cap- 
tain took it as a compliment, and made a polite answer, 
and the marriage was quickly arranged. On the night be- 
fore it the bride again climbed to his window, and again 
saw him having his teeth filed sharp. At this sight she 
laughed such a terrible laugh at the chink in the shutter, 
that the Captain’s blood curdled, and he said, I hope 
nothing has disagreed with me I ” At that she laughed 
again, a still more terrible laugh, and the shutter was 
opened and search made ; but she was nimbly gone, and 
there was no one. Next day they went to church in the 
coach and twelve, and were married. And that day 
month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain Murderer 
cut her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered 
her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent 
it to the baker’s, and ate it all, and picked the bones. 

But before she began to roll out the paste, she had tak- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


168 


en a deadly poison of a most awful character, distilled 
from toads^ eyes and spiders’ knees ; and Captain Mur- 
derer had hardly picked her last bone when he began to 
swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to 
scream. And he went on swelling, and turning bluer, and 
being more all over spots, and screaming, until he reached 
from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall ; and then, at 
one o’clock in the morning, he blew up with a loud explo- 
sion. At the sound of it all the milk-white horses in the 
stables broke their halters and went mad ; and then they 
galloped over everybody in Captain Murderer’s house (be- 
ginning with the family blacksmith who had filed his teeth) 
until the whole were dead, and then they galloped away. 

Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain 
Murderer in my early youth, and added hundreds of times 
was there a mental compulsion upon me in bed to peep in 
at his window as the dark twin peeped, and to revisit his 
horrible house, and look at him in his blue and spotty and 
screaming stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and 
from wall to wall. The young woman who brought me 
acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoy- 
ment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember, — as 
a sort of introductory overture, — by clawing the air with 
both hands, and uttering a long, low, hollow groan. So 
acutely did I sufler from this ceremony in combination 
with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead 
I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to 
hear the story again just yet. But she never spared me 
one word of it, and indeed commended the awful chalice 
to my lips as the only preservative known to science 
against ‘'The Black Cat,” — a weird and glaring-eyed 
supernatural Tom, who was reputed to prowl about the 
world by night, sucking the breath of infancy, and who 
was endowed with a special thirst (as I was given to un- 
derstand) for mine. 

This female bard — may she have been repaid my debt 
of obligation to her in the matter of nightmares and per- 
spirations I — reappears in my memory as the daughter 
of a shipwright. Her name was Mercy, though she had 
none on me. There was something of a ship-building fla- 
vor in the following story. As it always recurs to me in 
a vague association with calomel pills, I believe it to have 


164 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


been reserved for dull nights, when I was low with med- 
icine. 

There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Gov- 
ernment Yard, and his name was Chips. And his father^s 
name before him was Chips, and Ms father’s name before 
him was Chips, and they were all Chipses. And Chips 
the father had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and 
a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a 
rat that could speak ; and Chips the grandfather had sold 
himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of ten- 
penny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could 
speak ; and Chips the great-grandfather had disposed of 
himself in the same direction, on the same terms ; and the 
bargain had run in the family for a long, long time. So 
one day, when young Chips was at work in the Dock Slip 
all alone, down in the dark hold of an old Seventy-four 
that was haled up for repairs, the Devil presented himself, 
and remarked : — 

“ A Lemon has pips, 

And a Yard has ships, 

And/Tl have Chips!” 

(I don’t know why, but this fact of the Devil’s expressing 
himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.) Chips 
looked up when he heard the words, and there he saw the 
Devil, with saucer eyes that squinted on a terrible great 
scale, and that struck out sparks of blue fire continually. 
And whenever he winked his eyes, showers of blue sparks 
came out, and his eyelashes made a clattering like flints 
and steels striking lights. And hanging over one of his 
arms by the handle was an iron pot, and under that arm 
was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and under his other arm 
was half a ton of copper, and sitting on one of his shoul- 
ders was a rat that could .speak. So the Devil said 
again : — • 

« A Lemon has pips. 

And a Yard has ships. 

And I T1 have Chips ! ” 

(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the 
part of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for 
some moments.) So Chips answered never a word, but 
went on with his work. What are you doing. Chips ? ” 
said the rat that could speak. I am putting in new 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


165 


planks where you and your gang have eaten old away/^ 
said Chips. “ But we ’ll eat them too,” said the rat that 
could speak : “ and we ’ll let in the water and drown the 
crew, and we ’ll eat them too.” Chips, being only a ship- 
wright, and not a Man-of-war’s man, said, '‘You are wel- 
come to it.” But he could n’t keep his eyes off the half 
a ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails ; for nails 
and copper are a shipwright’s sweethearts, and ship- 
wrights will run away with them whenever they can. So 
the Devil said, " I see what you are looking at. Chips. 
You had better strike the bargain. You know the terms. 
Your father before you was well acquainted with them, 
and so were your grandfather and great-grandfather be- 
fore him.” Says Chips, " I like the copper, and I like 
the nails, and I don’t mind the pot, but I don’t like the 
rat.” Says the Devil, fiercely, “ You can’t have the metal 
without him, — and he ’s a curiosity. I ’m going.” 
Chips, afraid of losing the half a ton of copper and the 
bushel of nails, then said, " Give us hold ! ” So he got 
the copper and the nails and the pot, and the rat that 
could speak, and the Devil vanished. Chips sold the cop- 
per, and he sold the nails, and he would have sold the pot, 
but whenever he offered it for sale, the rat was in it, and 
the dealers dropped it, and would have nothing to say to 
the bargain. So Chips resolved to kill the rat, and, being 
at work in the Yard one day, with a great kettle of hot 
pitch on one side of him and the iron pot with the rat in 
it on the other, he turned the scalding pitch into the pot, 
and filled it full. Then he kept his eye upon it till it 
cooled and hardened, and then he let it stand for twenty 
days, and then he heated the pitch again, and turned it 
back into the kettle, and then he sank the pot in water for 
twenty days more, and then he got the smelters to put it 
in the furnace for twenty days more, and then they gave 
it him out, red-hot, and looking like red-hot glass instead 
of iron, — yet there was the rat in it, just the same as 
ever I And the moment it caught his eye, it said with a 
jeer : — 

« A Lemon has pips, 

And a Yard has ships, 

And I ’ll have Chips ! ” 

(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance with 


166 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


inexpressible horror, which now culminated.) Chips now 
felt certain in his own mind that the rat would stick to 
him ; the rat, answering his thought, said, ‘‘ I will, — like 
pitch I 

Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had 
spoken, and made off. Chips began to hope that it would 
n^t keep its word. But a terrible thing happened next 
day. For when dinner-time came and the Dock-bell rang 
to strike work, he put his rule into the long pocket at the 
side of his trousers, and there he found a rat, — not that 
rat, but another rat. And in his hat he found another ; 
and in his pocket-handkerchief another ; and in the sleeves 
of his coat, when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two 
more. And from that time he found himself so frightfully 
intimate with all the rats in the Yard, that they climbed 
up his legs when he was at work, and sat on his tools 
while he used them. And they could all speak to one 
another, and he understood what they said. And they 
got into his lodging, and into his bed, and into his tea- 
pot, and into his beer, and into his boots. And he was 
going to be married to a corn-chandler’s daughter ; and 
when he gave her a work-box he had himself made for her 
a rat jumped out of it ; and when he put his arm round 
her waist, a rat clung about her ; so the marriage was 
broken off, though the banns were already twice put up, 
— which the parish clerk well remembers, for, as he hand- 
ed the book to the clergyman for the second time of ask- 
ing, a large fat rat ran over the leaf. (By this time a 
special cascade of rats was rolling down my back, and 
the whole of my small listening person was overrun with 
them. At intervals ever since I have been morbidly 
afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should 
find a specimen or two of those vermin in it.) 

You may believe that all this was very terrible to 
Chips ; but even all this was not the worst. He knew, 
besides, what the rats were doing, wherever they were. 
So sometimes he would cry aloud, when he was at his 
club at night, 0, keep the rats out of the convicts’ 
burying-ground I Don’t let them do that 1 ” or, “ There ’s 
one of them at the cheese down stairs ! ” or, “ There ’s 
two of them smelling at the baby in the garret 1 ” or other 
things of that sort. At last he was voted mad, and lost 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 167 

his work in the Yard, and could get no other work. But 
King George wanted men, so before very long he got 
pressed for a sailor. And so he was taken off in a boat 
one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, ready to sail. 
And so the first thing he made out in her, as he got neai 
her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where he 
had seen the Devil. She was called the “ Argonaut,^^ 
and they rowed right under the bowsprit where the fig- 
ure-head of the Argonaut, with a sheep-skin in his hand 
and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea ; and sitting 
staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak, and 
his exact words were these : Chips ahoy ! Old boy I 
We Ve pretty well eat them too, and we dl drown the 
crew, and will eat them too ! ’’ (Here I always became 
exceedingly faint, and would have asked for water but 
that I was speechless.) 

The ship was bound for the Indies ; and if you donH 
know where that is, you ought to it, and angels will 
never love you. (Here I felt myself an outcast from a 
future state.) The ship set sail that very night, and she 
sailed, and sailed, and sailed. Chips^s feelings were 
dreadful. Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No won- 
der. At last, one day, he asked leave to speak to the 
Admiral. The Admiral giv’ leave. Chips went down on 
his knees in the Great State Cabin. “ Your Honor, un- 
less your Honor, without a moments loss of time, makes 
sail for the nearest shore, this is a doomed ship, and her 
name is the Coffin I ” “ Young man, your words are a 

madman’s words.” Your Honor, no ; they are nibbling 
us away.” They ? ” ‘‘ Your Honor, them dreadful 

rats. Dust and hollowness where solid oak ought to be I 
Rats nibbling a grave for every man on board I Oh I 
Does your Honor love your lady and your pretty chil- 
dren ? ” ‘‘ Yes, my man, to be sure.” ‘‘ Then, for 

God’s sake, make for the nearest shore ; for at this pres- 
ent moment the rats are all stopping in their work, and 
are all looking straight towards you with bare teeth, and 
are all saying to one another that you shall never, never, 
never, never see your lady and your children more.” 

My poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor. Sentry, 
take care of this man ! ” 

So he was bled, and he was blistered, and he was this 


168 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


and that, for six whole days and nights. So then he 
again asked leave to speak to the Admiral. The Admiral 
giv^ leave. He went down on his knees in the Great 
State Cabin. Now, Admiral, you must die ! You took 
no warning ; you must die I The rats are never wrong 
in their calculations, and they make out that they T1 be 
through at twelve to-night. So you must die I — with me 
and all the rest ! And so at twelve o^clock there was 
a great leak reported in the ship, and a torrent of water 
rushed in and nothing could stop it ; and they all went 
down, every living soul. And what the rats — being 
water-rats — left of Chips at last floated to shore, and sit- 
ting on him was an immense overgrown rat, laughing, 
that dived when the corpse touched the beach, and never 
came up. And there was a deal of sea- weed on the re- 
mains. And if you get thirteen bits of sea- weed, and dry 
them and burn them in the fire, they will go off like in 
these thirteen words as plain as plain can be : — 

“ A Lemon has pips. 

And a Yard has ships, 

And / Ve got Chips ! ** 

The same female bard — descended, possibly, from 
those terrible old Scalds who seem to have existed for 
the express purpose of addling the brains of mankind 
when they begin to investigate languages — made a 
standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me 
back to a number of hideous places that I would by all 
means have avoided. This pretence was, that all her 
ghost stories had occurred to her own relations. Polite- 
ness towards a meritorious family, therefore, forbade my 
doubting them, and they acquired an air of authentication 
that impaired my digestive powers for life. There was a 
narrative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding 
death, which appeared in the open street to a parlor maid 
who '‘went to fetch the beer for supper: first (as I 
now recall it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and 
gradually rising on its hind legs and swelling into the 
semblance of some quadruped greatly surpassing a hip- 
popotamus ; which apparition — not because I deemed it 
in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be really 
too large to bear — I feebly endeavored to explain away. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


169 


But on Mercy’s retorting, with wounded dignity, that 
the parlor-maid was her own sister-in-law, I perceived 
there was no hope, and resigned myself to this zoological 
phenomenon as one of my many pursuers. There was 
another narrative describing the apparition of a young 
woman who came out of a glass case and haunted another 
young woman, until the other young woman questioned 
it, and elicited that its bones (Lord I To think of its be- 
ing so particular about its bones !) were buried under the 
glass case, whereas she required them to be interred, 
with every Undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four 
pound ten, in another particular place. This narrative I 
considered I had a personal interest in disproving, be- 
cause we had glass cases at home, and how, otherwise, 
was I to be guaranteed from the intrusion of young wo- 
men requiring me to bury them up to twenty-four pound 
ten, when I had only twopence a week ? But my re- 
morseless nurse cut the ground from under my tender 
feet, by informing me that She was the other young wo- 
man ; and I could n’t say, I don’t believe you ” ; it was 
not possible. 

Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was 
forced to. make, against my will, when I was very young 
and unreasoning. And really, as to the latter part of them, 
it is not so very long ago — now I come to think of it — 
that I was asked to undertake them once again, with a 
steady countenance. 


170 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER^ 


XVI. 


ARCADIAN LONDON. 

Being in a humor for complete solitude and uninterrupt- 
ed meditation this autumn, I have taken a lodging for six 
weeks in the most unfrequented part of England, — in a 
word, in London. 

The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself is Bond 
Street. From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into 
the surrounding wilderness, and traverse extensive tracts 
of the Great Desert. The first solemn feeling of isolation 
overcome, the first oppressive consciousness of profound 
retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense of freedom, and 
feel reviving within me that latent wildness of the origi- 
nal savage, which has been (upon the whole somewhat 
frequently) noticed by Travellers. 

My lodgings are at a hatter’s, — my own hatter’s. Af- 
ter exhibiting no articles in his window for some weeks 
but seaside wide-awakes, shooting-caps, and a choice of 
rough waterproof head-gear for the moors and mountains, 
he has put upon the heads of his family as much of this 
stock as they could carry, and has taken them off to the 
Isle of Thanet. His young man alone remains — and 
remains alone — in the shop. The young man has let 
out the fire at which the irons are heated, and, saving his 
strong sense of duty, I see no reason why he should take 
the shutters down. 

Happily for himself and for his country, the young man 
is a Volunteer ; most happily for himself, or I think he 
would become the prey of a settled melancholy. For to 
live surrounded by human hats, and alienated from human 
heads to fit them on, is surely a great endurance. But 
the young man, sustained by practising his exercise, and 
by constantly furbishing up his regulation plume (it is un- 
necessary to observe that, as a hatter, he is in a cock’s- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


171 


feather corps), is resigned and uncomplaining. On a Sat- 
urday, when he closes early, and gets his Knickerbock- 
ers on, he is even cheerful. I am gratefully particular in 
this reference to him, because he is my companion through 
many peaceful hours. My hatter has a desk up certain 
steps behind his counter, enclosed like the clerk's desk at 
Church. I shut myself into this place of seclusion, after 
breakfast, and meditate. At such times I observe the 
young man loading an imaginary rifle with the greatest 
precision, and maintaining a most galling and destructive 
fire upon the national enemy. I thank him publicly for 
his companionship and his patriotism. 

The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of 
the scenes by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise 
early. I go forth in my slippers, and promenade the 
pavement. It is pastoral to feel the freshness of the air 
in the uninhabited town, and to appreciate the shepherd- 
ess character of the few milkwomen who purvey so little 
milk that it would be worth nobody's while to adulterate 
it, if anybody were left to undertake the task. On the 
crowded sea-shore, the great demand for milk, combined 
with the strong local temptation of chalk, would betray 
itself in the lowered quality of the article. In Arcadian 
London, I derive it from the cow. 

The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, 
and the primitive ways into which it has fallen in this au- 
tumnal Golden Age, make it entirely new to me. Within 
a few hundred yards of my retreat is the house of a friend 
who maintains a most sumptuous butler. I never, until 
yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine black broad- 
cloth. Until yesterday I never saw him off duty, never 
saw him (he is the best of butlers) with the appearance 
of having any mind for anything but the glory of his mas- 
ter and his master's friends. Yesterday morning, walking 
in my slippers near the house of which he is the prop and 
ornament, — a house now a waste of shutters, — I en- 
countered that butler, also in his slippers, and in a shoot- 
ing-suit of one color, and in a low-crowned straw hat, 
smoking an early cigar. He felt that we had formerly 
met in another state of existence, and that we were trans- 
lated into a new sphere. Wisely and well, he passed me 
without recognition. Under his arm he carried the morn- 


172 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ing paper, and shortly afterwards I saw him sitting on a 
rail in the pleasant open landscape of Regent Street pe- 
rusing it at his ease under the ripening sun. 

My landlord having taken his whole establishment to 
be salted down, I am waited on by an elderly woman la- 
boring under a chronic sniff, who, at the shadowy hour of 
half past nine o’clock of every evening, gives admittance 
at the street door to a meagre and mouldy old man, who 
I have never yet seen detached from a flat pint of beer in 
a pewter pot. The meagre and mouldy old man is her 
husband, and the pair have a dejected consciousness that 
they are not justified in appearing on the surface of the 
earth. They come out of some hole when London empties 
itself, and go in again when it fills. I saw them arrive on 
the evening when I myself took possession, and they ar- 
rived with the flat pint of beer, and their bed in a bundle. 
The old man is a weak old man, and appeared to me to get 
the bed down the kitchen stairs by tumbling down with 
and upon it. They make their bed in the lowest and re- 
motest corner of the basement, and they smell of bed, — 
and have no possession but bed, —unless it be (which 
I rather infer from an undercurrent of flavor in them) 
cheese. I know their name through the chance of having 
called the wife’s attention, at half past nine on the second 
evening of our acquaintance, to the circumstance of there 
being some one at the house door ; when she apologeti- 
cally explained, “ It ’s only Mr. Klem.” What becomes 
of Mr. Klem all day, or when he goes out, or why, is a 
mystery I cannot penetrate ; but at half past nine he nev- 
er fails to turn up on the doorstep with the flat pint of 
beer. And the pint of beer, flat as it is, is so much more 
important than himself, that it always seems to my fancy 
as if it had found him drivelling in the street, and had 
humanely brought him home. In making his way below, 
Mr. Klem never goes down the middle of the passage, like 
another Christian, but shufiles against the wall, as if en- 
treating me to take notice that he is occupying as little 
space as possible in the house ; and whenever I come up- 
on him face to face, he backs from me in fascinated con- 
fusion. The most extraordinary circumstance I have 
traced in connection with this aged couple is that there is 
a Miss Klem, their daughter, apparently ten years oldei 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


173 


than either of them, who has also a bed, and smells of it, 
and carries it about the earth at dusk, and hides it in de- 
serted houses. I came into this piece of knowledge 
through Mrs. Klem^s beseeching me to sanction the shel- 
tering of Miss Klem under that roof for a single night, 
“ between her takin^ care of the upper part in Pall Mall 
which the family of his back, and a ^ouse in Serjameses 
Street, which the family of leaves towng ter-morrer.^^ I 
gave my gracious consent (having nothing that I know 
of to do with it) ; and in the shadowy hours Miss Klem 
became perceptible on the doorstep, wrestling with a bed 
in a bundle. Where she made it up for the night I can- 
not positively state, but I think in a sink. I know that, 
with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she stowed it 
and herself away in deep obscurity. In the Klem family 
I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and that 
is a power they possess of converting everything into 
flue. Such broken victuals as they take by stealth appear 
(whatever the nature of the viands) invariably to gener- 
ate flue ; and even the nightly pint of beer, instead of as- 
similating naturally, strikes me as breaking out in that 
form equally on the shabby gown of Mrs. Klem and the 
threadbare coat of her husband. 

Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name, — as to Mr. Klem, 
he has no idea of anything, — and only knows me as her 
good gentleman. Thus, if doubtful whether I am in my 
room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door, and says, '' Is 
my good gentleman here ?” Or, if a messenger desiring 
to see me were consistent with my solitude, she would 
show him in with, ''Here is my good gentleman. I 
find this to be a generic custom. For I meant to have 
observed, before now, that in its Arcadian time all my 
part of London is indistinctly pervaded by the Klem 
species. They creep about with beds, and go to bed in 
miles of deserted houses. They hold no companionship 
except that sometimes, after dark, two of them will 
emerge from opposite houses, and meet in the middle of 
the road as on neutral ground, or will peep from adjoin- 
ing houses over an interposing barrier of area railings, 
and compare a few reserved, mistrustful notes respecting 
their good ladies or good gentlemen. This I have dis- 
covered in the course of various solitary rambles I have 


174 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


taken Northward from my retirement, along the awful 
perspectives of Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and sim- 
ilar frowning regions. Their effect would be scarcely dis- 
tinguishable from that of the primeval forests, but for the 
Klem stragglers ; these may be dimly observed, when 
the heavy shadows fall, flitting to and fro, putting up the 
door-chain, taking in the pint of beer, lowering, like 
phantoms, at the dark parlor windows, or secretly con- 
sorting underground with the dust-bin and the water- 
cistern. 

In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar 
pleasure, a primitive state of manners to have superseded 
the baneful influences of ultra civilization. Nothing can 
surpass the innocence of the ladies^ shoe-shops, the artifi- 
cial-flower repositories, and the head-dress depots. They 
are in strange hands at this time of year, — hands of 
unaccustomed persons, who are imperfectly acquainted 
with the prices of the goods, and contemplate them with 
unsophisticated delight and wonder. The children of 
these virtuous people exchange familiarities in the Arcade, 
and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles. Their 
youthful prattle blends in an unwonted manner with the 
harmonious shade of the scene, and the general effect is 
as of the voices of birds in a grove. In this happy res- 
toration of the golden time, it has been my privilege even 
to see the bigger beadle’s wife. She brought him his 
dinner in a basin, and he ate it in his arm-chair, and after- 
wards fell asleep like a satiated child. At Mr. Truefitt’s, 
the excellent hairdresser’s, they are learning French to 
beguile the time ; and even the few solitaries left on 
guard at Mr. Atkinson’s, the perfumer’s round the cor- 
ner (generally the most inexorable gentleman in London, 
and the most scornful of three and sixpence), condescend 
a little, as they drowsily bide or recall their turn of chas- 
ing the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand. From 
Messrs. Hunt and Roskell’s, the jewellers, all things are 
absent but the precious stones, and the gold and silver, 
and the soldierly pensioner at the door, with his decorated 
breast. I might stand night and day, for a month to 
come, in Saville Row, with my tongue out, yet not find 
a doctor to look at it for love or money. The dentists’ 
instruments are rusting in their drawers, and their horri- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


175 


ble cool parlors, where people pretend to read tlie Every- 
Day Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance for 
their grimness in white sheets. The light-weight of 
shrewd appearance, with one eye always shut up, as if 
he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all seasons, who 
usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on 
very little legs under a very large waistcoat, has gone to 
Doncaster. Of such undesigning aspect is his guileless 
yard now, with its gravel and scarlet beans, and the 
yellow Break housed under a glass roof in a corner, that 
I almost believe I could not be taken in there, if I tried. 
In the places of business of the great tailors, the cheval- 
glasses are dim and dusty for lack of being looked into. 
Ranges of brown paper coat and waistcoat bodies look as 
funereal as if they were tho hatchments of the customers 
with whose names they are inscribed ; the measuring-tapes 
hang idle on the wall ; the order-taker, left on the hopeless 
chance of some one looking in, yawns in the last extremity 
over the book of patterns, as if he were trying to read that 
entertaining library. The hotels in Brook Street have no 
one in them, and the staffs of servants stare disconsolate- 
ly for next season out of all the windows. The very 
man who goes about like an erect Turtle between two 
boards recommendatory of the Sixteen Shilling Trousers 
is aware of himself as a hollow mockery, and eats filberts 
while he leans his hinder shell against a wall. 

Among these tranquillizing objects it is my delight to 
walk and meditate. Soothed by the repose around me, I 
wander insensibly to considerable distances, and guide my- 
self back by the stars. Thus I enjoy the contrast of a 
few still partially inhabited and busy spots, where all the 
lights are not fled, where all the garlands are not dead, 
whence all but I have not departed. Then does it ap- 
pear to me that in this age three things are clamorously 
required of Man in the miscellaneous thoroughfares of the 
metropolis. Firstly, that he have his boots cleaned. 
Secondly, that he eat a penny ice. Thirdly, that he get 
himself photographed. Then do I speculate, what have 
those seam-worn artists been who stand at the photo- 
graph doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and mysteri- 
ously salute the public — the female public with a press- 
ing tenderness — to come in and be took ? What did 


176 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


they do with their greasy blandishments before the era 
of cheap photography ? Of what class were their previ- 
ous victims, and how victimized ? And how did they 
get, and how did they pay for, that large collection of 
likenesses, all purporting to have been taken inside, with 
the taking of none of which had that establishment any 
more to do than with the taking of Delhi ? 

But these are small oases, and I am soon back again 
in metropolitan Arcadia. It is my impression that much 
of its serene and peaceful character is attributable to the 
absence of customary Talk. How do I know but there 
may be subtle influences in Talk to vex the souls of men 
who don^t hear it ? How do 1 know but that Talk, five, ten, 
twenty miles ofi*, may get into the air and disagree with 
me ? If I rise from my bed vaguely troubled and wearied 
and sick of my life in the session of Parliament, who 
shall say that my noble friend, my right reverend friend, 
my right honorable friend, my honorable friend, my hon- 
orable and learned friend, or my honorable and gallant 
friend, may not be responsible for that effect upon my 
nervous system ? Too much Ozone in the air, I am in- 
formed and fully believe (though I have no idea what it 
is), would affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way ; 
why may not too much Talk ? I don’t see or hear the 
Ozone ; I don’t see or hear the Talk. And there is so 
much Talk ; so much too much ; such loud cry, and such 
_ scant supply of wool ; such a deal of fleecing, and so 
little fleece I Hence, in the Arcadian season, I find it a 
delicious triumph to walk down to deserted Westminster 
and see the Courts shut up ; to walk a little farther and 
see the Two Houses shut up ; to stand in the Abbey 
Yard, like the New-Zealander of the grand English His- 
tory (concerning which unfortunate man a whole rookery 
of mares’ nests is generally being discovered), and gloat 
upon the ruins of Talk. Returning to my primitive soli- 
tude, and lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands 
with the consciousness that there is no adjourned Debate, 
no ministerial explanation, nobody to give notice of inten- 
tion to ask the noble Lord at the head of her Majesty’s 
government five-and-twenty bootless questions in one, no 
term-time with legal argument, no Nisi Prius with elo- 
quent appeal to British Jury ; that the air will' to-morrow, 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


177 


and to-morrow, and to-morrow, remain untroubled by this 
superabundant generating of Talk. In a minor degree it 
is a delicious triumph to me to go into the club, and see the 
carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed 
to the four winds. Again, New-Zealander-like, I stand 
on the cold hearth, and say in the solitude: '‘Here I 
watched Bore A 1, with voice always mysteriously low, 
and head always mysteriously drooped, whispering politi- 
cal secrets into the ears of Adam’s confiding children. 
Accursed be his memory forever and a day I ” 

But I have all this time been coming to the point, that 
the happy nature of my retirement is most sweetly ex- 
pressed in its being the abode of Love. It is, as it were, 
an inexpensive Agapemone ; nobody’s speculation ; every- 
body’s profit. The one great result of the resumption of 
primitive habits, and (convertible terms) the not having 
much to do, is the abounding of Love. 

The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions ; 
probably, in that low, nomadic race, the softer emotions 
have all degenerated into fine. But, with this exception, 
all the sharers of my retreat make love. 

I have mentioned Saville Kow. We all know the 
Doctor’s servant. We all know what a respectable man 
he is, what a hard, dry man, what a firm man, what a con- 
fidential man ; how he lets us into the waiting-room, like a 
man who knows minutely what is the matter with us, but 
from whom the rack should not wring the secret. In the 
prosaic " season,” he has distinctly the appearance of a 
man conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking 
his stand on his respectability with both feet. At that 
time it is as impossible to associate him. with relaxation, 
or any human weakness, as it is to meet his eye without 
feeling guilty of indisposition. In the blest Arcadian 
time, how changed ! I have seen him in a pepper-and- 
salt jacket — jacket — and drab trousers, with his arm 
round the waist of a boot-maker’s housemaid, smiling in 
open day. I have seen him at the pump by the Albany, 
unsolicitedly pumping for two fair young Creatures, whose 
figures, as they bent over their cans, were — if I may be 
allowed an original expression — a model for the sculptor. 
I have seen him trying the piano in the Doctor’s drawing- 
room with his forefinger, and have heard him humming 
12 


178 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


tunes in praise of lovely woman. I have seen him seated 
on a fire-engine, and going (obviously in search of excite- 
ment) to a fire. I saw him, one moonlight evening, when 
the peace and purity of our Arcadian west were at their 
height, polk with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of 
gloves, from the doorsteps of his own residence, across 
Saville Eow, round by Clifibrd Street and Old Burlington 
Street back to Burlington Gardens. Is this the Golden 
Age revived, or Iron London ? 

The Dentist^ s servant. Is that man no mystery to us, 
no type of invisible power ? The tremendous individual 
knows (who else does ?) what is done with the extracted 
teeth ; he knows what goes on in the little room where 
something is always being washed or filed ; he knows 
what warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable 
tumbler from which we rinse our wounded mouth, with a 
gap in it that feels a foot wide ; he knows whether the 
thing we spit into is a fixture communicating with the 
Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance ; he sees 
the horrible parlor when there are no patients in it, and 
he could reveal, if he would, what becomes of the Every- 
Day Book then. The conviction of my coward conscience, 
when I see that man in a professional light, is, that ho 
knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my dou- 
ble teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my 
sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him as of 
a harmless, powerless creature in a Sce'tch cap, who 
adores a young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a neigh- 
boring billiard-room, and whose passion would be uninflu- 
enced if every one of her teeth were false. They may be 
lie takes them all on trust. 

In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there 
are little shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and 
never two together, where servants’ perquisites are 
bought. The cook may dispose of grease at these mod- 
est and convenient marts; the butlei, of bottles; the 
valet and lady’s maid, of clothes ; most servants, indeed, 
of most things they may happen to lay hold of. I have 
been told that in sterner times loving correspondence 
otherwise interdicted may be maintained by letter through 
the agency of some of these useful establishments. In 
the Arcadian autumn, no such device is necessary. Every- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


179 


body loves, and openly and blamelessly loves. My land- 
lord’s young man loves the whole of one side of the way 
of old Bond Street, and is beloved several doors up new 
Bond Street besides. I never look out of window but I 
see kissing of hands going on all around me. It is the 
morning custom to glide from shop to shop and exchange 
tender sentiments ; it is the evening custom for couples to 
stand hand in hand at house doors, or roam, linked in that 
flowery manner, through the unpeopled streets. There is 
nothing else to do but love ; and what there is to do is 
done. 

In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains 
in the domestic habits of Arcadia. Its few scattered peo- 
ple dine early, live moderately, sup socially, and sleep 
soundly. It is rumored that the Beadles of the Arcade, 
from being the mortal enemies of boys, have signed with 
tears an address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to 
a ragged school. No wonder 1 For they might turn their 
heavy maces into crooks, and tend sheep in the Arcade, 
to the purling of the water-carts, as they give the thirsty 
streets much more to drink than they can carry. 

A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity. Charm- 
ing picture, but it will fade. The iron age will return, 
London will come back to town ; if I show my tongue then 
in Saville Row for half a minute I shall be prescribed for, 
the Doctor’s man and the Dentist’s man will then pretend 
that these days of unprofessional innocence never existed. 
Where Mr. and Mrs. Klem and their bed will be at that 
time passes human knowledge ; but my hatter hermitage 
will then know them no more, nor will it then know me. 
The desk at which I have written these meditations will 
retributively assist at the making-out of my account, and 
the wheels of gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of high- 
stepping horses will crush the silence out of Bond Street, 
— will grind Arcadia away, and give it to the elements 
in granite powder. 


180 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XYII. 


THE CALAIS NIGHT-MAIL. 

It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave 
Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall 
leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am 
always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of con- 
stant indecision on this subject. 

When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as 
a maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and 
dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no ex- 
tremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness, — who 
was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache some- 
where in its stomach, — who had been put into a horri- 
ble swing in Dover Harbor, and had tumbled giddily out 
of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. 
Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant 
and rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep a 
lookout for it, I recognize its landmarks when I see any 
of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I know — 
and I can bear — its worst behavior. 

Malignant Calais I Low-lying alligator, evading the 
eyesight and discouraging hope I Dodging flat streak, 
now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now every- 
where, now nowhere ! In vain Cape Grinez, coming 
frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout 
of heart and stomach ; sneaking Calais, prone behind its 
bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no 
longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an 
evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless 
than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit, 
and you think you are there — roll, roar, wash I — Calais 
has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look 
for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, 
has Calais, to be especially commended to the infernal 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


181 


gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it 
dives under the boat^s keel, and comes up a league or two 
to the right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and 
staring about for it ! 

Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I 
particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with 
which it goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am 
going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and 
candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, 
host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much 
esteemed friends ; but they are too conceited about the 
comforts of that establishment when the Night-Mail is 
starting. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I 
don’t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright 
windows at such an hour. I know the Warden is a sta- 
tionary edifice that never rolls or pitches ; and I object to 
its big outline seeming to insist upon that circumstance, 
and as it were to come over me with it when I am reeling 
on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise 
for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry 
as it rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite 
soon enough without the officious Warden’s interference ? 

As I wait here on board the night packet for the South- 
eastern Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears 
to me to be illuminated for some intensely aggravating 
festivity in my personal dishonor. All its noises smack 
of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the 
gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The drums upon 
the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle 
taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this 
slippery deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade 
twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with derision. The 
distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrap- 
pers, as if I were Eichard the Third. 

A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down 
the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered 
more smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes 
noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were 
lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over 
which they had no control from drinking peaceably. We, 
the boat, become violently agitated, — rumble, hum, 
scream, roar, and establish an immense family washing* 


182 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


day at each paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the 
train as the doors of the post-oflSce vans are opened ; and 
instantly stooping figures with sacks upon their backs be- 
gin to be beheld among the piles, descending, as it would 
seem, in ghostly procession to Davy Jones’s Locker. 
The passengers come on board, — a few shadowy French- 
men, with hat-boxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic 
case-bottles ; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur 
coats and boots ; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for 
the worst, and pretending not to expect it. I cannot dis- 
guise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that 
we are a body of outcasts ; that the attendants on us are 
as scant in number as may serve to get rid of us with the 
least possible delay ; that there are no night-loungers in 
terested in us ; that the unwilling lamps shiver and shud- 
der at us ; that the sole object is* to commit us to the 
deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in 
increasing distance, and then the very train itself has 
gone to bed before we are off ! 

What is the moral support derived by some sea-going 
amateurs from an umbrella ? Why do certain voyagers 
across the Channel always put up that article, and hold 
it up with a grim and fierce tenacity ? A fellow-creature 
near me — whom I only know to be a fellow-creature be- 
cause of his umbrella ; without which he might be a dark 
bit of cliff, pier, or bulkhead — clutches that instrument 
with a desperate grasp, that will not relax until he lands 
at Calais. Is there any analogy, in certain constitutions, 
between keeping an umbrella up and keeping the spirits 
up ? A hawser thrown on board with a flop replies. 

Stand by 1 ” ‘'Stand by, below.” “Half a turn 
ahead ! ” “ Half a turn ahead ! ” “ Half speed I ” “ Half 
speed I ” “ Port ! ” “ Port ! ” “ Steady I ” “ Steady ! ” 
“ Go on I ” “ Go on ! ” 

A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple 
and out at my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in 
my throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose 
in a blunt pair of pincers, — these are the personal sensa- 
tions by which I know we are off, and by which I shall 
continue to know it until I am on the soil of France. My 
symptoms have scarcely established themselves comforta- 
bly, when two or three skating shadows that have been 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


183 


trying to walk or stand get flung together, and other two 
or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into cor- 
ners and cover them up. Then the South Foreland lights 
begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes no good. 

It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais 
knows no bounds. Inwardly, I resolve afresh that I 
never will forgive that hated town. I have done so 
before, many times ; but that is past. Let me register 
a vow. Implacable animosity to Calais everm — that was 
an awkward sea ; and the funnel seems of my opinion, for 
it gives a complaining roar. 

The wind blows stiffly from the NoFeast, the sea runs 
high, we ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, 
and the shapeless passengers lie about in melancholy 
bundles, as if they were sorted out for the laundress ; 
but for my own uncommercial part I cannot pretend that 
I am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A 
general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scoop- 
ing, I am aware of, and a general knocking about of 
nature ; but the impressions I receive are very vague. In 
a sweet, faint temper, something like the smell of dam- 
aged oranges, I think I should feel languidly benevolent 
if I had time. I have not time, because I am under 
a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish 
melodies. ‘‘ Rich and rare were the gems she wore,^^ is 
the particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I 
sing it to myself in the most charming manner and with 
the greatest expression. Now and then I raise my head 
(I am sitting on the hardest of wet seats, in the most 
uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don^t mind it), and 
notice that I am a whirling shuttlecock between a fiery 
battledore of a light-house on the French coast and a fiery 
battledore of a light-house on the English coast ; but I 
don’t notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in 
my hatred of Calais. Then I go on again, ‘‘ Rich and 
rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore. And a bright gold 
ring on her wa-and she bo-ore. But 0 her beauty was 
fa-a-a-a-r beyond,” — I am particularly proud of my exe- 
cution here, when I become aware of another awkward 
shock from the sea, and another protest from the funnel, 
and a fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly in- 
disposed than I think he need be, — “ Her sparkling gems. 


184 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


or snow-white wand, But 0, her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r be- 
yond/^ — another awkward one here, and the fellow-crea- 
ture with the umbrella down and picked up, — '‘Her 
spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or her Port I port ! steady ! steady ! 
snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very selfish- 
ly audible, bump, roar, wash, white wand.^^ 

As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my 
imperfect perceptions of what is going on around me, so 
what is going on around me becomes something else than 
what it is. The stokers open the furnace doors below to 
feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old 
Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the 
forever-extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the 
hatches and paddle-boxes is their gleam on cottages and 
hay-stacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines is 
the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the inter- 
mittent funnel roar of protest at every violent roll be- 
comes the regular blast of a high-pressure engine, and I 
recognize the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I 
ascended the Mississippi when the American civil war 
was not, and when only its causes were. A fragment of 
mast on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, 
and a jerking block or so, become suggestive of Fran- 
comes Circus at Paris, where I shall be this very night 
mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance to 
the self-same time and tune as the trained steed. Black 
Kaven, What may be the specialty of these waves as 
they come rushing on, I cannot desert the pressing de- 
mands made upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire ; 
but they are charged with something about Robinson 
Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he 
first went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a 
terrific sound that word had for me when I was a boy !) 
in his first gale of wind. Still, through all this, I must 
ask her (who was she, I wonder!) for the fiftieth time, 
and without ever stopping. Does she not fear to stray, 
So lone and lovely through this bleak way. And are Brings 
sons so good or so cold. As not to be tempted by more 
fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold ? Sir Knight, 
I feel not the least alarm. No son of Erin will offer me 
harm. For though they love fellow-creature with umbrella 
down again and golden store. Sir Knight, they what a 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


185 


tremendous one love honor and virtue more ; For though 
they love Stewards with a bulFs-eye bright, they ’ll trou- 
ble you for your ticket, sir, — rough passage to-night I 

I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human 
weakness and inconsistency, but I no sooner become con- 
scious of those last words from the steward, than I begin 
to soften towards Calais. Whereas I have been vindic- 
tively wishing that those Calais burghers who came out 
of their town by a short cut into the History of England, 
with those fatal ropes round their necks by which they 
have since been towed into so many cartoons, had all 
been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as 
highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen. Looking 
about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of 
the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais 
Harbor undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and 
shining. Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say 
of attachment to Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I 
have weak notions that I will stay there a day or two on 
my way back. A faded and recumbent stranger, paus- 
ing in a profound revery over the rim of a basin, asks me 
what kind of place Calais is. I tell him (Heaven forgive 
me ! ) a very agreeable place indeed, — rather hilly than 
otherwise. 

So strangely goes the time, and, on the whole, so 
quickly, — though still I seem to have been on board a 
week, — that I am bumped, rolled, gurgled, washed, and 
pitched into Calais Harbor before her maiden smile has 
finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When blest 
forever is she who relied. On entering Calais at the top 
of the tide. For we have not to land to-night down 
among those slimy timbers, — covered with green hair, 
as if it were the mermaids’ favorite combing-place, - — 
where one crawls to the surface of the jetty, like a 
stranded shrimp ; but we go steaming up the harbor to 
the Kailway Station Quay. And, as we go, the sea 
washes in and out among piles and planks, with dead 
heavy beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof we 
are proud) ; and the lamps shake in the wind, and the 
bells of Calais striking One seem to send their vibrations 
struggling against troubled air, as we have come strug- 
gling against troubled water. And now, in Ihe sudden 


186 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


relief and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to 
have had a prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this 
veiy instant free of the dentist’s hands. And now we 
all know for the first time how wet and cold we are, and 
how salt we are ; and now I love Calais with my heart 
of hearts I 

“ H6tel Dessin ! ” (but in this one case it is not a vo- 
cal cry ; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery 
representative of that best of inns.) “ HOtel Meurice ! ” 
“ H6tel de France ! ” “ H6tel de Calais ! ” “ The Royal 
Hotel, sir, Angaishe ouse ! ” “ You going to Parry, 

sir? ” “ Your baggage, registair froo, sir ? ” Bless ye, 

my Touters, bless ye, my commissionnaires, bless ye, my 
hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of a military form, who 
are always here, day or night, fair weather or foul, seek- 
ing inscrutable jobs which I never see you get ! Bless 
ye, my Custom-House officers in green and gray ; permit 
me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my 
travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom 
to give my change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it 
were a measure of chaff or grain ! I have nothing to de- 
clare, Monsieur le Douanier, except that when 1 cease to 
breathe, Calais will be found written on my heart. No 
article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur 
rOfficier de 1’ Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast 
devoted to your charming town should be in that wise 
chargeable. Ah ! see at the gangway, by the twinkling 
lantern, my dearest brother and friend, he once of the 
Passport Office, he who collects the names ! May he be 
forever changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with his 
note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat surmounting 
his round, smiling, patient face ! Let us embrace, my 
dearest brother. I am yours d tout jamais — for the 
whole of ever. 

Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais 
down and dreaming in its bed ; Calais with something 
of “ an ancient and fish -like smell ” about it, and Calais 
blown and sea-washed pure ; Calais represented at the 
Buffet by savory roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bor- 
deaux ; and Calais represented everywhere by flitting 
persons with a monomania for changing money, — though 
I never shall be able to understand, in my present state 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


187 


of existence, how they live by it ; but I suppose I should 
if I understood the currency question, — Calais en gros, 
and en detail, forgive one who has deeply wronged you. 
I was not fully aware of it on the other side, but I meant 
Dover. 

Ding, ding I To the carriages, gentlemen the travel- 
lers. Ascend, then, gentlemen the travellers, for Haze- 
broucke, Lille, Douai, Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and 
Paris I I, humble representative of the uncommercial in- 
terest, ascend with the rest. The train is light to-night, 
and I share my compartment with but two fellow-trav- 
ellers ; one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who 
thinks it a quite unaccountable thing that they don’t keep 
“ London time ” on a French railway, and who is made 
angry by my modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris 
time being more in their way ; the other, a young priest, 
with a very small bird in a very small cage, who feeds 
the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the 
network above his head, where he advances twittering to 
his front wires, and seems to address me in an elec- 
tioneering manner. The compatriot (who crossed in the 
boat, and whom I judge to be some person of distinction, 
as he was shut up, like a stately species of rabbit, in a 
private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who joined 
us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I 
have it all to ourselves. 

A stormy night still ; a night that sweeps the wires of 
the electric telegraph with a wild and fitful hand ; a night 
so very stormy, with the added storm of the train-progress 
through it, that when the Guard comes clambering round 
to mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a really 
horrible performance in an express train, though he holds 
on to the open window by his elbows in the most delib- 
erate manner), he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip 
him fast by the collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to 
let him go. Still, when he is gone, the small, small bird 
remains at his front wires feebly twittering to me, — twit- 
tering and twittering, until, leaning back in my place, 
and looking at him in drowsy fascination, I find that he 
seems to jog my memory as we rush along. 

Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have 
Iain, in their idle, thriftless way, through all this range of 


188 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


swamp and dike, as through many other odd places ; and 
about here, as you very well know, are the queer old 
stone farm-houses, approached by drawbridges, and the 
windmills that you get at by boats. Here are the lands 
where the women hoe and dig, paddling canoewise from 
field to field ; and here are the cabarets and other peas- 
ant-houses, where the stone dove-cotes in the littered 
yards are as strong as warders’ towers in old castles. 
Here are the long monotonous miles of canal, with the 
great Dutch-built barges garishly painted, and the towing 
girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead, sometimes by 
the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to see. 
Scattered through this country are mighty works of Vau- 
BAN, whom you know about, and regiments of such cor- 
porals as you heard of once upon a time, and many a 
blue-eyed Bebelle. Through these flat districts, in the 
shining summer days, walk those long grotesque files of 
young novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you re- 
member blackening the ground checkered by the ave- 
nues of leafy trees. And, now that Hazebroucke slum- 
bers certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening 
when your dusty feet, strolling up from the station, tend- 
ed hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants 
were circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobby- 
horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the princi- 
pal show in the Fair was a Religious Richardson’s, — 
literally, on its own announcement in great letters. 
Theatre Religieux. In which improving Temple the 
dramatic representation was of “all the interesting events 
in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the Tomb ” ; 
the principal female character, without any reservation or 
exception, being at the moment of your arrival engaged 
in trimming the external Moderators (as it was growing 
dusk), while the next principal female character took the 
money, and the Young Saint John disported himself 
upside down on the platform. 

Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small 
bird in every particular he has mentioned, I find he has 
ceased to twitter, and has put his head under his wing. 
Therefore, in my difierent way, I follow the good example. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


189 


XYIII. 


SOME RECOLLECTIONS OP MORTALITY. 

I HAD parted from the small bird at somewhere about 
four o^clock in the morning, when he had got out at Arras, 
and had been received by two shovel-hats in waiting at 
the station, who presented an appropriately ornithological 
and crow-like appearance. My compatriot and I had 
gone on to Paris ; my compatriot enlightening me occa- 
sionally with a long list of the enormous grievances of 
French railway travelling, — every one of which, as I am 
a sinner, was perfectly new to me, though I have as 
much experience of French railways as most uncommer- 
cials. I had left him at the terminus (through his con- 
viction, against all explanation and remonstrance, that his 
baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket) insisting, in a 
very high temper, to the functionary on duty, that in his 
own personal identity he was four packages weighing so 
many kilogrammes, — as if he had been Cassim Baba I 
I had bathed and breakfasted, and was strolling on the 
bright quays. The subject of my meditations was the 
question whether it is positively in the essence and nature 
of things, as a certain school of Britons would seem to 
think it, that a Capital must be ensnared and enslaved 
before it can be made beautiful, — when I lifted up my 
eyes, and found that my feet, straying like my mind, had 
brought me to Notre Dame. 

That is to say, Notre Dame was before me, but there 
was a large open space between us. A very little while 
gone, I had left that space covered with buildings densely 
crowded ; and now it was cleared for some new wonder 
in the way of public Street, Place, Garden, Fountain, or 
all four. Only the obscene little Morgue, slinking on the 
brink of the river, and soon to come down, was left there, 
looking mortally ashamed of itself, and supremely wicked, 


190 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


I had but glanced at this old acquaintance; when I beheld 
an airy procession coming round in front of Notre Dame, 
past the great hospital. It had something of a Masani- 
ello look, with fluttering striped curtains in the midst of 
it, and it came dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest 
manner. 

I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a 
Christening, or some other domestic festivity which I 
would see out, when I found, from the talk of a quick 
rush of Blouses past me, that it was a Body coming to the 
Morgue. Having never before chanced upon this initia- 
tion, I constituted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into 
the Morgue with the rest. It was a very muddy day, 
and we took in a quantity of mire with us, and the pro- 
cession coming in upon our heels brought a quantity more. 
The procession was in the highest spirits, and consisted 
of idlers who had come with the curtained litter from its 
starting-place, and of all the reinforcements it had picked 
up by the way. It set the litter down in the midst of the 
Morgue, and then two Custodians proclaimed aloud that 
we were all ‘‘ invited to go out. This invitation was 
rendered the more pressing, if not the more flattering, by 
our being shoved out, and the folding-gates being barred 
upon us. 

Those who have never seen the Morgue may see it per- 
fectly by presenting to themselves an indifierently paved 
coach-house accessible from the street by a pair of folding- 
gates ; on the left of the coach-house, occupying its 
width, any large London tailor’s or linen-draper’s plate- 
glass window reaching to the ground ; within the window, 
on two rows of inclined planes, what the coach-house has 
to show ; hanging above, like irregular stalactites from 
the roof of a cave, a quantity of clothes, — the clothes of 
the dead and buried shows of the coach-house. 

We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing 
the Custodians pull ofi’ their coats and tuck up their shirt- 
sleeves, as the procession came along. It looked so in- 
terestingly like business. Shut out in the muddy street, 
we now became quite ravenous to know all about it. 
Was it river, pistol, knife, love, gambling, robbery, ha- 
tred ? how many stabs, how many bullets, fresh or 
decomposed, suicide or murder ? All wedged together, 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


191 


and all staring* at one another with our heads thrust for- 
ward, we propounded these inquiries and a hundred more 
such. Imperceptibly it came to be known that Monsieur 
the tall and sallow mason yonder was acquainted with the 
facts. Would Monsieur the tall and sallow mason, surged 
at by a new wave of us, have the goodness to impart ? It 
was but a poor old man, passing along the street under 
one of the new buildings, on whom a stone had fallen, and 
who had tumbled dead. His age ? Another wave 
surged up against the tall and sallow mason, and our 
wave swept on and broke, and he was any age from sixty- 
five to ninety. 

An old man was not much ; moreover, we could have 
wished he had been killed by human agency, — his own, 
or somebody else’s ; the latter preferable, — but our com- 
fort was that he had nothing about him to lead to his 
identification, and that his people must seek him here. 
Perhaps they were waiting dinner for him even now ? We 
liked that. Such of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs took 
a slow, intense, protracted wipe at our noses, and then 
crammed our handkerchiefs into the breast of our blouses. 
Others of us who had no handkerchiefs administered a 
similar relief to our overwrought minds by means of pro- 
longed smears or wipes of our mouths on our sleeves. 
One man, with a gloomy malformation of brow, — a homi- 
cidal worker in white lead, to judge from his blue tone of 
color, and a certain flavor of paralysis pervading him, — 
got his coat-collar between his teeth, and bit at it with an 
appetite. Several decent women arrived upon the out- 
skirts of the crowd, and prepared to launch themselves 
into the dismal coach-house when opportunity should 
come ; among them, a pretty young mother, pretending 
to bite the forefinger of her baby-boy, kept it between her 
rosy lips that it might be handy for guiding to point at 
the show. Meantime, all faces were turned towards the 
building, and we men waited with a fixed and stern reso- 
lution, — for the most part with folded arms. Surely it 
was the only public French sight these uncommercial eyes 
had seen, at which the expectant people did not form en 
queue. But there was no such order of arrangement here ; 
nothing but a general determination to make a rush for it, 
amd a disposition to object to some boys who had mounted 


192 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


on tlie two stone posts by the hinges of the gates, with 
the design of swooping in when the hinges should turn. 

Now they turned, and we rushed ! Great pressure, and 
a scream or two from the front. Then a laugh or two, 
some expressions of disappointment, and a slackening of 
the pressure and subsidence of the struggle. — Old man 
not there. 

“ But what would you have ? the Custodian reason- 
ably argues, as he looks out at his little door. “ Patience, 
patience ! We make his toilet, gentlemen. He will be 
exposed presently. It is necessary to proceed according 
to rule. His toilet is not made all at a blow. He will 
be exposed in good time, gentlemen, — in good time.^' 
And so retires, smoking, with a wave of his sleeveless arm 
towards the window, importing, Entertain yourselves in 
the mean while with the other curiosities. Fortunately 
the Museum is not empty to-day. 

Who would have thought of public fickleness even at 
the Morgue ? But there it was on that occasion. Three 
lately popular articles that had been attracting greatly 
when the litter was first descried coming dancing round 
the corner by the great cathedral were so completely 
deposed now, that nobody save two little girls (one show- 
ing them to a doll) would look at them. Yet the chief 
of the three, the article in the front row, had received 
jagged injury of the left temple ; and the other two in the 
back row, the drowned two, lying side by side with their 
heads very slightly turned towards each other, seemed to 
be comparing notes about it. Indeed, those two of the 
back row were so furtive of appearance, and so (in their 
puffed way) assassinatingly knowing as to the one of the 
front, that it was hard to think the three had never come 
together in their lives, and were only chance companions 
after death. Whether or no this was the general, as it 
was the uncommercial, fancy, it is not to be disputed that 
the group had drawn exceedingly within ten minutes.. 
Yet now the inconstant public turned its back upon them, 
and even leaned its elbows carelessly against the bar out- 
side the window, and shook off the mud from its shoes, 
and also lent and borrowed fire for pipes. 

Custodian re-enters from his door : “ Again once, gen- 
tlemen, you are invited — No further invitation neces- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


193 


sary. Ready dash into the street. Toilet finished. Old 
man coming out. 

This time the interest was grown too hot to admit of 
toleration of the boys on the stone posts. The homicidal 
white-lead worker made a pounce upon one boy who was 
hoisting himself up, and brought him to earth amidst gen- 
eral commendation. Closely stowed as we were, we yet 
formed into groups — groups of conversation, without 
separation from the mass — to discuss the old man. 
Rivals of the tall and sallow mason sprang into being, and 
here again was popular inconstancy. These rivals at- 
tracted audiences, and were greedily listened to ; and 
whereas they had derived their information solely from 
the tall and sallow one, oflBcious members of the crowd 
now sought to enlighten Mm on their authority. Changed 
by this social experience into an iron-visaged and inveter- 
ate misanthrope, the mason glared at mankind, and evi- 
dently cherished in his breast the wish that the whole of 
the present company could change places with the de- 
ceased old man. And now listeners became inattentive, 
and people made a start forward at a slight sound, and 
an unholy fire kindled in the public eye, and those next 
the gates beat at them impatiently, as if they were of the 
cannibal species and hungry. 

Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed. Disorderly 
pressure for some time ensued before the uncommercial 
unit got figured into the front row of the sum. It was 
strange to see so much heat and uproar seething about 
one poor, spare, white-haired old man, quiet forevermore. 
He was calm of feature and undisfigured, as he lay on 
his back, — having been struck upon the hinder part of 
the head, and thrown forward ; and something like a tear 
or two had started from the closed eyes, and lay wet 
upon the face. The uncommercial interest, sated at a 
glance, directed itself upon the striving crowd on either 
side and behind ; wondering whether one might have 
guessed, from the expression of those faces merely, what 
kind of sight they were looking at. The differences of 
expression were not many'. There was a little pity, but 
not much, and that mostly with a selfish touch in it, — 
as who would say, “ Shall I, poor I, look like that, when 
the time comes I There was more of a secretly brood- 
13 


194 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ing contemplation and curiosity, as, “ That man 1 don^t 
like, and have the grudge against ; would such be his 
appearance, if some one — not to mention names — by 
any chance gave him an ugly knock ? ” There was a 
wolfish stare at the object, in which the homicidal white- 
lead worker shone conspicuous. And there was a much 
more general, purposeless, vacant staring at it, — like 
looking at waxwork without a catalogue, and not knowing 
what to make of it. But all these expressions concurred 
ill possessing the one underlying expression of looking at 
something that could not return a look. The uncommer- 
cial notice had established this as very remarkable, when 
a new pressure, all at once coming up from the street, 
pinioned him ignominiously, and hurried him into the 
arms (now sleeved again) of the Custodian smoking at 
his door, and answering questions between puffs, with a 
certain placid, meritorious air of not being proud, though 
high in office. And mentioning pride, it may be observed, 
by the way, that one could not well help investing the 
original sole occupant of the front row with an air depre- 
ciatory of the legitimate attraction of the poor old man, 
while the two in the second row seemed to exult at his 
superseded popularity. 

Pacing presently round the garden of the tower of 
St. Jacques de la Boucherie, and presently again in front 
of the Hotel de Ville, I called to mind a certain desolate, 
open-air Morgue that I happened to light upon in London, 
one day in the hard winter of 1861, and which seemed as 
strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I had found 
it in China. Towards that hour of a winter’s afternoon 
when the lamplighters are beginning to light the lamps 
in the streets a little before they are wanted, because the 
darkness thickens fast and soon, I was walking in from 
the country on the northern side of the Kegent’s Park, — 
hard-frozen and deserted, — when I saw an empty hansom 
cab drive up to the lodge at Gloucester Gate, and the 
driver, with great agitation, call to the man there, who 
quickly reached a long pole from a tree, and, deftly col- 
lared by the driver, jumped to the step of his little seat, 
and so the hansom rattled out at the gate, galloping 
over the iron-bound road. I followed, running, though 
not so fast but that when I came to the right-hand Canal 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


195 


Bridge, near the cross-path to Chalk Farm, the hansom 
was stationary, the horse was smoking hot, the long pole 
was idle on the ground, and the driver and the park- 
keeper were looking over the bridge parapet. Looking 
over too, I saw, lying on the towing-path, with her face 
turned up towards us, a woman, dead a day or two, and 
under thirty, as I guessed, poorly dressed in black. The 
feet were lightly crossed at the ankles, and the dark hair, 
all pushed back from the face, as though that had been 
the last action of her desperate hands, streamed over the 
ground. Dabbled all about her was the water and the 
broken ice that had dropped from her dress, and had 
splashed as she was got out. The policeman who had 
just got her out, and the passing costermonger who had 
helped him, were standing near the body ; the latter, with 
that stare at it which I have likened to being at a wax- 
work exhibition without a catalogue ; the former looking 
over his stock, with professional stiffness and coolness, 
in the direction in which the bearers he had sent for were 
expected. So dreadfully forlorn, so dreadfully sad, so 
dreadfully mysterious, this spectacle of our dear sister 
here departed I A barge came up breaking the floating 
ice and the silence, and a woman steered it. The man, 
with the horse that towed it, cared so little for the body, 
that the stumbling hoofs had been among the hair, and 
the tow-rope had caught and turned the head, before our 
cry of horror took him to the bridle. At which sound the 
steering woman looked up at us on the bridge with con- 
tempt unutterable, and then, looking down at the body 
with a similar expression, — as if it were made in another 
likeness from herself, had been informed with other pas- 
sions, had been lost by other chances, had had another 
nature dragged down to perdition, — steered a spurning 
streak of mud at it, and passed on. 

A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in 
which chance happily made me useful in a slight degree, 
arose to my remembrance as I took my way by the Boule- 
vart de Sebastopol to the brighter scenes of Paris. 

The thing happened say five-and-twenty years ago. I 
was a modest young uncommercial then, and timid and 
inexperienced. Many suns and winds have browned me 
in the line, but those were my pale days. Having newly 


196 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


taken the lease of a house in a certain distinguished 
metropolitan parish, — a house which then appeared to 
me to be a frightfully first-class Family Mansion, involv- 
ing awful responsibilities, — I became the prey of a 
Beadle. I think the Beadle must have seen me going in 
or coming out, and must have observed that I tottered 
under the weight of my grandeur. Or he may have been 
in hiding under straw when I bought my first horse (in 
the desirable stable-yard attached to the first-class Family 
Mansion), and when the vendor remarked to me, in an 
original manner, on bringing him for approval, taking his 
cloth ofi', and smacking him, There, sir I There ’s a 
Orse I and when I said gallantly, How much do you 
want for him ? ’’ and when the vendor said, No more 
than sixty guineas from you,’’ and when I said smartly. 

Why not more than sixty from me?^’ and when he said 
crushingly, “ Because upon my soul and body he ’d be 
considered cheap at seventy by one who understood the 
subject, — but you don’t,” — I say, the Beadle may have 
been in hiding under straw when this disgrace befell me, 
or he may have noted that I was too raw and young an 
Atlas to carry the first-class Family Mansion in a know- 
ing manner. Be this as it may, the Beadle did what 
Melancholy did to the youth in Gray’s Elegy, — he 
marked me for his own. And the way in which the Bea- 
dle did it was this : he summoned me as a juryman on his 
Coroner’s Inquests. 

In my first feverish alarm I repaired “ for safety and 
for succor” — like those sagacious Northern shepherds 
who, having had no previous reason whatever to believe 
in young Norval, very prudently did not originate the 
hazardous idea of believing in him — to a deep house- 
holder. This profound man informed me that the Beadle 
counted on my buying him ofi* ; on my bribing him not to 
summon me ; and that if I would attend an Inquest with 
a cheerful countenance, and profess alacrity in that branch 
of my country’s service, the Beadle would be disheart- 
ened, and would give up the game. 

I roused my energies, and the next time the wily Bea- 
dle summoned me, I went. The Beadle was the blankest 
Beadle I have ever looked on when I answered to my 
name ; and his discomfiture gave me courage to go 
through with it. 


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197 


We were impanelled to inquire concerning the deatli 
of a very little mite of a child. It was the old miserable 
story. Whether the mother had committed the minor of- 
fence of concealing the birth, or whether she had com- 
mitted the major offence of killing the child, was the 
question on which we were wanted. We must commit 
her on one of the two issues. 

The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I 
have yet a lively impression that I was unanimously re- 
ceived by my brother Jurymen as a brother of the utmost 
conceivable insignificance. Also that, before we began, 
a broker who had lately cheated me fearfully in the mat- 
ter of a pair of card-tables was for the utmost rigor of tho 
law. I remember that we sat in a sort of board-room, on 
such very large, square, horse-hair chairs that I wondered 
what race of Patagonians they were made for ; and fur- 
ther that an undertaker gave me his card, when we were 
in the full moral freshness of having just been sworn, as 
“ an inhabitant that was newly come into the parish, and 
was likely to have a young family. The case was then 
stated to us by the coroner, and then we went down 
stairs — led by the plotting Beadle — to view the body 
From that day to this, the poor little figure on which that 
sounding legal appellation was bestowed has lain in the 
same place, and with the same surroundings, to my think- 
ing. In a kind of crypt devoted to the warehousing of 
the parochial coffins, and in the midst of a perfect Pano- 
rama of coffins of all sizes, it was stretched on a box ; the 
mother had put it in her box — this box — almost as soon 
as it was born, and it had been presently found there. It 
had been opened, and neatly sewn up, and, regarded 
from that point of view, it looked like a stuffed creature. 
It rested on a clean white cloth, with a surgical instru- 
ment or so at hand, and, regarded from that point of 
view, it looked as if the cloth were ‘^laid,’^ and the Giant 
were coming to dinner. There was nothing repellant 
about the poor piece of innocence, and it demanded a 
mere form of looking at. So we looked at an old pauper 
who was going about among the coffins with a foot-rule, 
as if he were a case of Self-Measurement ; and we looked 
at one another ; and we said the place was well white- 
washed anyhow ; and then our conversational powers as 


198 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


a British Jury flagged, and the foreman said, AH right, 
gentlemen ? Back again, Mr. Beadle I 

The miserable young creature who had given birth to 
this child within a very few days, and who had cleaned the 
cold, wet doorsteps immediately afterwards, was brought 
before us when we resumed our horse-hair chairs, and 
was present during the proceedings. She had a horse- 
hair chair herself, being very weak and ill ; and I remem- 
ber how she turned to the unsympathetic nurse who 
attended her, and who might have been the figure-head 
of a pauper-ship, and how she hid her face and sobs and 
tears upon that wooden shoulder. I remember, too, how 
hard her mistress was upon her (she was a servant of all 
work), and with what a cruel pertinacity that piece of 
Virtue spun her thread of evidence double by intertwist- 
ing it with the sternest thread of construction. Smitten 
hard by the terrible low wail from the utterly friendless 
orphan girl, which never ceased during the whole inquiry, 
I took heart to ask this witness a question or two, which 
hopefully admitted of an answer that might give a favor- 
able turn to the case. She made the turn as little favor- 
able as it could be ; but it did some good, and the Coro- 
ner, who was nobly patient and humane (he was the late 
Mr. Wakley), cast a look of strong encouragement in my 
direction. Then we had the doctor who had made the 
examination, and the usual tests as to whether the child 
was born alive ; but he was a timid, muddle-headed 
doctor, and got confused and contradictory, and would 
n’t say this, and could n’t answer for that, and the im- 
maculate broker was too much for him, and our side slid 
back again. However, I tried again, and the Coroner 
backed me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grate- 
ful to him, as I do now to his memory ; and we got another 
favorable turn out of some other witness, — some member 
of the family with a strong prepossession against the 
sinner ; and I think we had the doctor back again ; and 
I know that the Coroner summed up for our side, and 
that I and my British brothers turned round to discuss 
our verdict, and get ourselves into great difficulties with 
our large chairs and the broker. At that stage of the 
case I tried hard again, being convinced that I had cause 
for it ; and at last we found for the minor offence of only 


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199 


concealing the birth ; and the poor desolate creature who 
had been taken out during our deliberation, being brought 
in again to be told of the verdict, then dropped upon her 
knees before us, with protestations that we were right, — 
protestations among the most affecting that I have ever 
heard in my life, — and was carried away insensible. 

(In private conversation after this was all over, the 
Coroner showed me his reasons, as a trained surgeon, for 
perceiving it to be impossible that the child could, under 
the most favorable circumstances, have drawn many 
breaths, in the very doubtful case of its having ever 
breathed at all ; this owing to the discovery of some for- 
eign matter in the windpipe, quite irreconcilable with 
many moments of life.) 

When the agonized girl had made those final protesta- 
tions, I had seen her face, and it was in unison with her 
distracted, heart-broken voice, and it was very moving. 
It certainly did not impress me by any beauty that it had, 
and if I ever see it again in another world I shall only 
know it by the help of some new sense or intelligence. 
But it came to me in my sleep that night, and I selfishly 
dismissed it in the most efficient way I could think of. I 
caused some extra care to be taken of her in the prison, 
and counsel to be retained for her defence when she was 
tried at the Old Bailey ; and her sentence was lenient, 
and her history and conduct proved that it was right. 
In doing the little I did for her, I remember to have had 
the kind help of some gentle-hearted functionary to whom 
I addressed myself, — but what functionary I have long 
forgotten, — who I suppose was officially present at the 
Inquest. 

I regard this as a very notable uncommercial experi- 
ence, because this good came of a Beadle. And to the 
best of my knowledge, information, and belief, it is the 
only good that ever did come of a Beadle since the first 
Beadle put on his cocked hat. 


200 


THE UKCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLEB. 


XIX. 


BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS. 

It came into my mind that I would recall in these notes 
a few of the many hostelries I have rested at in the course 
of my journeys ; and, indeed, I had taken up my pen for 
the purpose, when I was baffled by an accidental circum- 
stance. It was the having- to leave off, to wish the own- 
er of a certain bright face that looked in at my door 
‘‘many happy returns of the day/^ Thereupon a new 
thought came into my mind, driving its predecessor out, 
and I began to recall — instead of Inns — the birthdays 
that I have put up at on my way to this present sheet of 
paper. 

I can very well remember being taken out to visit some 
peach-faced creature in a blue sash, and shoes to corre- 
spond, whose life I supposed to consist entirely of birth- 
days. Upon seed-cake, sweet wine, and shining presents, 
that glorified young person seemed to me to be exclusive- 
ly reared. At so early a stage of my travels did I assist 
at the anniversary of her nativity (and become enamored 
of her), that I had not yet acquired the recondite knowl- 
edge that a birthday is the common property of all who 
are born, but supposed it to be a special gift bestowed by 
the favoring Heavens on that one distinguished infant. 
There was no other company, and we sat in a shady 
bower, — under a table, as my better (or worse) knowl- 
edge leads me to believe, — and were regaled with 
saccharine substances and liquids, until it was time to 
part. A bitter powder was administered to me next 
morning, and I was wretched, — on the whole, a pretty 
accurate foreshadowing of my more mature experiences in 
Buch wise I 

Then came the time when, inseparable from one^s own 
birthday, was a certain sense of merit, a consciousness of 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


201 


well-earned distinction ; when I regarded ray birthday as 
a graceful achievement of my own, a monument of my 
perseverance, independence, and good sense, redounding 
greatly to my honor. This was at about the period when 
Olympia Squires became involved in the anniversary. 
Olympia was most beautiful (of course), and I loved her to 
that degree that I used to be obliged to get out of my lit- 
tle bed in the night expressly to exclaim to Solitude, ‘‘ 0 
Olympia Squires I Visions of Olympia, clothed entirely 
in sage-green, from which 1 infer a defectively educated 
taste on the part of her respected parents, who were 
necessarily unacquainted with the South Kensington Mu- 
seum, still arise before me. Truth is sacred ; and the 
visions are crowned by a shining white beaver bonnet, 
impossibly suggestive of a little feminine post-boy. My 
memory presents a birthday when Olympia and 1 were 
taken by an unfeeling relative — some cruel uncle, or the 
like — to a slow torture called an Orrery. The terrible 
instrument was set up at the local Theatre, and I had ex- 
pressed a profane wish in the morning that it was a Play ; 
for which a serious aunt had probed my conscience deep, 
and my pocket deeper, by reclaiming a bestowed half- 
crown. It was a venerable and a shabby Orrery, at least 
one thousand stars and twenty-five comets behind the age. 
Nevertheless, it was awful. When the low-spirited gen- 
tleman with the wand said, Ladies and gentlemen, 
(meaning particularly Olympia and me,) the lights are 
about to be put out, but there is not the slightest cause 
for alarm, it was very alarming. Then the planets and 
stars began. Sometimes they would n't come on, some- 
times they would n't go oft*, sometimes they had holes in 
them, and mostly they did n't seem to be good likenesses. 
All this time the gentleman with the wand was going on 
in the dark (tapping away at the Heavenly bodies between 
whiles, like a wearisome woodpecker), about a sphere re- 
volving on its own axis eight hundred and ninety-seven 
thousand millions of times — or miles — in two hundred and 
sixty-three thousand five hundred and twenty-four millions 
of something elses, until I thought if this was a birthday it 
were better never to have been born. Olympia also became 
much depressed ; and we both slumbered and woke cross, 
and still the gentleman was going on in the dark, — 


202 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


whether up in the stars, or down on the stage, it would 
have been hard to make out, if it had been worth trying, 
— ciphering away about planes of orbits, to such an infa- 
mous extent that Olympia, stung to madness, actually 
kicked me. A pretty birthday spectacle when the lights 
were turned up again, and all the schools in the town 
(including the National, who had come in for nothing, and 
serve them right, for they were always throwing stones) 
were discovered with exhausted countenances, screwing 
their knuckles into their eyes, or clutching their heads of 
hair. A pretty birthday speech when Doctor Sleek of the 
City-Free bobbed up his powdered head in the stage-box, 
and said that before this assembly dispersed he really 
must beg to express his entire approval of a lecture as im- 
proving, as informing, as devoid of anything that could call 
a blush into the cheek of youth, as any it had ever been his 
lot to hear delivered. A pretty birthday altogether, when 
Astronomy could nH leave poor Small Olympia Squires 
and me alone, but must put an end to our loves I For 
we never got over it ; the threadbare Orrery outwore our 
mutual tenderness ; the man with the wand was too 
much for the boy with the bow. 

When shall I disconnect the combined smells of or- 
anges, brown paper, and straw from those other birth- 
days at school, when the coming hamper cast its shadow 
before, and when a week of social harmony — shall I add 
of admiring and affectionate popularity ? — led up to that 
Institution ? What noble sentiments were expressed to 
me in the days before the hamper, what vows of friend- 
ship were sworn to me, what exceedingly old knives were 
given me, what generous avowals of having been in the 
wrong emanated from else obstinate spirits, once enrolled 
among my enemies ! The birthday of the potted game 
and guava jelly is still made special to me by the noble 
conduct of Bully Globson. Letters from home had mys- 
teriously inquired whether I should be much surprised 
and disappointed if among the treasures in the coming 
hamper I discovered potted game, and guava jelly from 
the Western Indies. I had mentioned those hints in con- 
fidence to a few friends, and had promised to give away, 
as I now see reason to believe, a handsome covey of par- 
tridges potted, and about a hundred-weight of guava 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


203 


jelly. It was now that Globson, Bully no more, sought 
me out in the playground. He was a big fat boy, with a 
big fat head and a big fat fist, and at the beginning of 
that Half had raised such a bump on my forehead that I 
could n^t get my hat of state on to go to church. He 
said that after an interval of cool reflection (four months), 
he now felt this blow to have been an error of judgment, 
and that he wished to apologize for the same. Not only 
that, but, holding down his big head between his two 
big hands in order that I might reach it conveniently, he 
requested me, as an act of justice which would appease 
his awakened conscience, to raise a retributive bump upon 
it, in the presence of witnesses. This handsome proposal 
I modestly declined, and he then embraced me, and we 
walked away conversing. We conversed respecting the 
West India Islands ; and in the pursuit of knowledge he 
asked me with much interest whether, in the course of 
my reading, I had met with any reliable description of 
the mode of manufacturing guava jelly ; or whether I had 
ever happened to taste that conserve, which he had been 
given to understand was of rare excellence. 

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty ; and then with 
the waning months came an ever-augmenting sense of the 
dignity of twenty-one. Heaven knows I had nothing to 
come into save the bare birthday, and yet I esteemed 
it as a great possession. I now and then paved the way 
to my state of dignity, by beginning a proposition with 
the casual words, ‘‘ Say that a man of twenty-one, or by 
the incidental assumption of a fact that could not sanely 
be disputed, as, For when a fellow comes to be a man 
of twenty-one. I gave a party on the occasion. She 
was there. It is unnecessary to name Her more particu- 
larly ; She was older than I, and had pervaded every 
chink and crevice of my mind for three or four years. I 
had held volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her 
mother on the subject of our union, and I had written let- 
ters, more in number than Horace Walpole’s, to that dis- 
creet woman, soliciting her daughter’s hand in marriage. 
I had never had the remotest intention of sending any of 
those letters ; but to write them, and after a few days tear 
them up, had been a sublime occupation. Sometimes I 
had begun, Honored Madam. I think that a lady gifted 


204 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


with those powers of observation which I know you to 
possess, and endowed with those womanly sympathies 
with the young and ardent which it were more than heresy 
to doubt, can scarcely have failed to discover that I love 
your adorable daughter, deeply, devotedly, In less 
buoyant states of mind I had begun, “ Bear with me, Dear 
Madam, — bear with a daring wretch who is about to 
make a surprising confession to you, wholly unanticipated 
by yourself, and which he beseeches you to commit to the 
flames as soon as you have become aware to what a tow- 
ering height his mad ambition soars. At other times — 
periods of profound mental depression, when She had gone 
out to balls where I was not — the draft took the aflect- 
ing form of a paper to be left on my table after my depar- 
ture to the confines of the globe. As thus : For Mrs. 
Onowenever, these lines, when the hand that traces them 
shall be far away. I could not bear the daily torture of 
hopelessly loving the dear one whom I will not name 
Broiling on the coast of Africa, or congealing on the 
shores of Greenland, I am far, far better there than here.’^ 
(In this sentiment my cooler judgment perceives that the 
family of the beloved object would have most completely 
concurred.) If I ever emerge from obscurity, and my 
name is ever heralded by Fame, it will be for her dear 
sake. If I ever amass Gold, it will be to pour it at her 
feet. Should I, on the other hand, become the prey of 
Ravens — I doubt if I ever quite made up my mind what 
was to be done in that affecting case ; I tried, ‘‘ then it 
is better so ; but, not feeling convinced that it would 
be better so, I vacillated between leaving all else blank, 
which looked expressive and bleak, or winding up with, 

Farewell I ” 

This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for 
the foregoing digression. I was about to pursue the state- 
ment that on my twenty-first birthday I gave a party, and 
She was there. It was a beautiful party. There was not 
a single^ animate or inanimate object connected with it 
(except the company and myself) that I had ever seen 
before. Everything was hired, and the mercenaries in 
attendance were profound strangers to me. Behind a 
door, in the crumby part of the night, when wineglasses 
were to be found in unexpected spots, I spoke to Her, — 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


205 


spoke out to Her. What passed I cannot as a man of 
honor reveal. She was all angelical gentleness, but a 
word was mentioned — a short and dreadful word of three 
letters, beginning with a B — which, as I remarked at 
the moment, '' scorched my brain.’’ She went away soon 
afterwards, and when the hollow throng (though to be 
sure it was no fault of theirs) dispersed, I issued forth, 
with a dissipated scorner, and, as I mentioned expressly 
to him, sought oblivion” It was found, with a dread- 
ful headache in it, but it did n’t last ; for, in the shaming 
light of next day’s noon, 1 raised my heavy head in bed, 
looking back to the birthdays behind me, and tracking 
the circle by which I had got round, after all, to the bitter 
powder and the wretchedness again. 

This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the hu- 
man race that I am inclined to regard it as the Universal 
Medicine once sought for in Laboratories) is capable of 
being made up in another form for birthday use. Any- 
body’s long-lost brother will do ill to turn up on a birth- 
day. If I had a long-lost brother, I should know before- 
hand that he would prove a tremendous fraternal failure 
if he appointed to rush into my arms on my birthday. 
The first Magic Lantern I ever saw was secretly and 
elaborately planned to be the great effect of a very juve- 
nile birthday ; but it would n’t act, and its images were 
dim. My experience of adult birthday Magic Lanterns 
may possibly have been unfortunate, but has certainly 
been similar. I have an illustrative birthday in my eye, 
— a birthday of my friend Flipfield, whose birthdays had 
long been remarkable as social successes. There had 
been nothing set or formal about them ; Flipfield having 
been accustomed merely to say, two or three days before, 
“ Don’t forget to come and dine, old boy, according to 
custom ” ; — I don’t know what he said to the ladies he 
invited, but I may safely assume it not to have been old 
girl.” Those were delightful gatherings, and were en- 
joyed by all participators. In an evil hour, a long-lost 
brother of Flipfield’s came to light in foreign parts. 
Where he had been hidden, or what he had been doing, I 
don’t know, for Flipfield vaguely informed me that he 
had turned up on the banks of the Ganges” ; — speak- 
ing of him as if he had been washed ashore. The Long- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


lost was coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortunate 
calculation, based on the well-known regularity of the P. 
and 0. Steamers, that matters might be so contrived as 
that the Long-lost should appear in the nick of time on 
his (Flipfield^s) birthday. Delicacy commanded that I 
should repress the gloomy anticipations with which my 
soul became fraught when I heard of this plan. The fa- 
tal day arrived, and we assembled in force. Mrs. Flii> 
field, senior, formed an interesting feature in the group, 
with a blue-veined miniature of the late Mr. Flipfield 
round her neck, in an oval, resembling a tart from the 
pastry-cook’s ; his hair powdered, and the bright buttons 
on his coat evidently very like. She was accompanied by 
Miss Flipfield, the eldest of her numerous family, who held 
her pocket-handkerchief to her bosom in a majestic man- 
ner, and spoke to all of us (none of us had ever seen her 
before) in pious and condoning tones of all the quarrels 
that had taken place in the family from her infancy — 
which must have been a long time ago — down to that 
hour. The Long-lost did not appear. Dinner, half an 
hour later than usual, was announced, and still no Long- 
lost. We sat down to table. The knife and fork of the 
Long-lost made a vacuum in nature, and when the cham- 
pagne came round for the first time, Flipfield gave him 
up for the day, and had them removed. It was then that 
the Long-lost gained the height of his popularity with the 
company ; for my own part, I felt convinced that I loved 
him dearly. Flipfield’s dinners are perfect, and he is the 
easiest and best of entertainers. Dinner went on brilliant- 
ly, and the more the Long-lost did n’t come, the more 
comfortable we grew, and the more highly we thought 
of him. Flipfield’s own man (who has a regard for me) 
was in the act of struggling with an ignorant stipendiary, 
to wrest from him the wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl which 
he was pressing on my acceptance, and to substitute a 
slice of the breast, when a ringing at the door-bell sus- 
pended the strife. I looked round me, and perceived the 
sudden pallor which I knew my own visage revealed 
reflected in the faces of the company. Flipfield hurriedly 
excused himself, went out, was absent for about a minute 
or two, and then re-entered with the Long-lost. 

I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


207 


Mont Blanc with him, or had come attended by a retinue 
of eternal snows, he could not have chilled the circle to 
the marrow in a more eflScient manner. Embodied Fail- 
ure sat enthroned upon the Long-lost^s brow, and per- 
vaded him to his Long-lost boots. In vain Mrs. Flipfield 
senior, opening her arms, exclaimed, ‘^My Tom ! and 
pressed his nose against the counterfeit presentment of 
his other parent. In vain Miss Flipfield, in the first 
transports of this reunion, showed him a dint upon her 
maidenly cheek, and asked him if he remembered when 
he did that with the bellows. We, the by-standers, were 
overcome, but overcome by the palpable, undisguisable, 
utter, and total breakdown of the Long-lost. Nothing he 
could have done would have set him right with us but 
his instant return to the Ganges. In the very same mo- 
ments it became established that the feeling was recipro- 
cal, and that the Long-lost detested us. When a friend 
of the family (not myself, upon my honor), wishing to 
set things going again, asked him, while he partook of 
soup, — asked him with an amiability of intention beyond 
all praise, but with a weakness of execution open to 
defeat, — what kind of river he considered the Ganges, 
the Long-lost, scowling at the friend of the family, over 
his spoon, as one of an abhorrent race, replied, Why, a 
river of water, I suppose,’^ and spooned his soup into him- 
self with a malignancy of hand and eye that blighted the 
amiable questioner. Not an opinion could be elicited 
from the Long-lost in unison with the sentiments of any 
individual present. He contradicted Flipfield dead, be- 
fore he had eaten his salmon. He had no idea — or 
affected to have no idea — that it was his brother's birth- 
day, and, on the communication of that interesting fact 
to him, merely wanted to make him out four years older 
than he was. He was an antipathetical being, with a 
peculiar power and gift of treading on everybody’s ten- 
derest place. They talk in America of a man’s Plat- 
form.” I should describe the Platform of the Long-lost 
as a Platform composed of other people’s corns, on which 
he had stumped his way, with all his might and main, to 
his present position. It is needless to add that Flipfield’s 
great birthday went by the board, and that he was a 
wreck when I pretended at parting to wish him many 
happy returns of it. 


208 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


There is another class of birthdays at which I have so 
frequently assisted, that I may assume such birthdays to 
be pretty well known to the human race. My friend 
Mayday^s birthday is an example. The guests have no 
knowledge of one another except on that one day in the 
year, and are annually terrified for a week by the pros- 
pect of meeting one another again. There is a fiction 
among us that we have uncommon reasons for being par- 
ticularly lively and spirited on the occasion, whereas deep 
despondency is no phrase for the expression of our feel- 
ings. But the wonderful feature of the case is that we 
are in tacit accordance to avoid the subject, — to keep it 
as far off as possible, as long as possible, — and to talk 
about anything else, rather than the joyful event. I may 
even go so far as to assert that there is a dumb compact 
among us that we will pretend that it is not Mayday’s 
birthday. A mysterious and gloomy Being, who is said 
to have gone to school with Mayday, and who is so lank 
and lean that he seriously impugns the Dietary of the es- 
tablishment at which they were jointly educated, always 
leads us, as I may say, to the block, by laying his grisly 
hand on a decanter and begging us to fill our glasses. 
The devices and pretences that I have seen put in prac- 
tice to defer the fatal moment, and to interpose between 
this man and his purpose, are innumerable. I have known 
desperate guests, when they saw the grisly hand ap- 
proaching the decanter, wildly to begin, without any an- 
tecedent whatsoever, “ That reminds me — ” and to 
plunge into long stories. When at last the hand and the 
decanter come together, a shudder — a palpable, percep- 
tible shudder — goes round the table. We receive the 
reminder that it is Mayday’s birthday as if it were the 
anniversary of some profound disgrace he had undergone, 
and we sought to comfort him. And when we have 
drunk Mayday’s health, and wished him many happy 
returns, we are seized for some moments with a ghastly 
blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if we were in the first 
flushed reaction of having undergone a surgical opera- 
tion. 

Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a 
private phase. My “ boyhood’s home,” Dullborough, 
presents a case in point. An Immortal Somebody was 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER ^OS 

wanted in Dullborougli to dimple for a day the stagnant 
face of the waters ; he was rather wanted by Dullborough 
generally, and much wanted by the principal hotel-keeper. 
The County history was looked up for a locally Immortal 
Somebody, but the registered Dullborough worthies wore 
all Nobodies. In this state of things, it is hardly neces- 
sary to record that Dullborough did what every man does 
when he wants to write a book or deliver a lecture, and 
’s provided with all the materials except a subject. It 
fell back upon Shakespeare. 

No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare’s 
birthday in Dullborough, than the popularity of the im- 
mortal bard became surprising. You might have sup- 
posed the first edition of his works to have been published 
last week, and enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half 
through them. (I doubt, by the way, whether it had 
ever done half that; but this is a private opinion.) A 
young gentleman with a sonnet, the retention of which 
for two years had enfeebled his mind and undermined his 
knees, got the sonnet into the Dullborough Warden, and 
gained flesh. Portraits of Shakespeare broke out in the 
book-shop windows, and our principal artist painted a 
large, original portrait in oils for the decoration of the 
dining-room. It was not in the least like any of the other 
portraits, and was exceedingly admired, the head being 
much swollen. At the Institution, the Debating Society 
discussed the new question. Was there suflScient ground 
for supposing that the Immortal Shakespeare ever stole 
deer ? This was indignantly decided, by an overwhelm- 
ing majority, in the negative ; indeed, there was but one 
vote on the Poaching side, and that was the vote of the 
orator who had undertaken to advocate it, and who be- 
came quite an obnoxious character, — particularly to the 
Dullborough roughs,” who were about as well-informed 
on the matter as most other people. Distinguished speak- 
ers were invited down, and very nearly came (but not 
quite). Subscriptions were opened, and committees sat; 
and it would have been far from a popular measure, in the 
height of the excitement, to have told Dullborough that it 
wasn’t Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet after all these prep- 
arations, when the great festivity took placje, and the por- 
trait, elevated aloft, surveyed the company as if it were in 
14 


210 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


danger of springing a mine of intellect and blowing itself 
up, it did undoubtedly happen, according to the inscru- 
table mysteries of things, that nobody could be induced, 
not to say to touch upon Shakespeare, but to come within 
a mile of him, until the crack speaker of Dullborough rose 
to propose the immortal memory, which he did with the 
perplexing and astonishing result that before he had re- 
peated the great name half a dozen times, or had been 
upon his legs as many minutes, he was assailed with a 
general shout of, ** Question/^ 




THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


211 


XX. 


BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 

Behold me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot 
morning early in June. My road lies through that part 
of London generally known to the initiated as Down by 
the Docks. Down by the Docks is Home to a good 
many people, — to too many, if I may judge from the 
overflow of local population in the streets, — but my nose 
insinuates that the number to whom it is Sweet Home 
might be easily counted. Down by the Docks is a region 
I would choose as my point of embarkation aboard ship 
if I were an emigrant. It would present my intention to 
me in such a sensible light ; it would show me so many 
things to be run away from. 

Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and 
scatter the roughest oyster-shells known to the descend- 
ants of Saint George and the Dragon. Down by the 
Docks, they consume the slimiest of shell-fish, which 
seem to have been scraped ofi' the copper bottoms of 
ships. Down by the Docks, the vegetables at green- 
grocers^ doors acquire a saline and a scaly look, as if 
they had been crossed with fish and sea-weed. Down by 
the Docks, they “board seamen at the eating-houses, 
the public-houses, the slop-shops, the cofiee-shops, the 
tally-shops, all kinds of shops, mentionable and unmen- 
tionable, — board them, as it were, in the piratical sense, 
making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter. Down 
by the Docks, the seamen roam in midstreet and mid- 
day, their pockets inside-out, and their heads no better. 
Down by the Docks, the daughters of wave-ruling Bri- 
tannia also rove, clad in silken attire, with uncovered 
tresses streaming in the breeze, bandanna kerchiefs float- 
ing from their shoulders, and crinoline not wanting. 
Down by the Docks, you may hear the Incomparable Joe 


212 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Jackson sing the Standard of England with a hornpipe, 
any night ; or any day may see at the waxwork, for a 
penny and no waiting, him as killed the policeman at 
Acton, and suffered for it. Down by the Docks, you may 
buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, 
if you are not particular what they are made of besides 
seasoning. Down by the Docks, the children of Israel 
creep into any gloomy cribs and entries thej^ can hire, 
and hang slops there, — pewter watches, sou tester hats, 
waterproof overalls, — firtht rate articleth, Thjack.^^ 
Down by the Docks, such dealers, exhibiting on a frame 
a complete nautical suit without the refinement of a wax- 
en visage in the hat, present the imaginary wearer as 
drooping at the yard arm, with his seafaring and earth- 
faring troubles over. Down by the Docks, the placards 
in the shops apostrophize the customer, knowing him 
familiarly beforehand, as, ‘‘ Look here. Jack ! “ Here ^s 

your sort, my lad ! ^' ‘‘ Try our sea-going mixed, at two 
and nine ! ‘‘ The right kit for the British tar I “ Ship 

ahoy 1 ^‘Splice the main-brace, brother I Come, 
cheer up, my lads. We Ve the best liquors here. And you 
^11 find something new In our wonderful Beer I Down 
by the Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on Union- 
Jack pocket-handkerchiefs, on watches with little ships 
pitching fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical 
instruments in cases, and such like. Down by the Docks, 
the apothecary sets up in business on the wretchedest 
scale, — chiefly on lint and plaster for the strapping of 
wounds, — and with no bright bottles, and with no little 
drawers. Down by the Docks, the shabby undertaker's 
shop will bury you for next to nothing, after the Malay or 
Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing at all ; so you can 
hardly hope to make a cheaper end. Down by the Docks, 
anybody drunk will quarrel with anybody drunk or sober, 
and everybody else will have a hand in it, and on the 
shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of red 
shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed 
arms, Britannia’s daughters, malice, mud, maundering, 
and madness. Down by the Docks, scraping fiddles go 
in the public-houses all day long, and shrill above their 
din, and all the din, rises the screeching of innumerable 
parrots brought from foreign parts, who appear to be 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


213 


very much astonished by what they find on these native 
shores of ours. Possibly the parrots don^t know, possi- 
bly they do, that Down by the Docks is the road to the 
Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the savage 
girls plait fiowers, and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut 
shells, and the grim blind idols muse in their shady 
groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests and 
chiefs. And possibly the parrots don’t know, possibly 
they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor 
wherever he is, and has five hundred thousand volumes 
of indifierent rhyme, and no reason, to answer for. 

Shadwell church I Pleasant whispers of there being a 
fresher air down the river than down by the Docks go 
pursuing one another, playfully, in and out of the open- 
ings in its spire. Gigantic in the basin just beyond the 
church looms my Emigrant Ship, her name the Amazon. 
Her figure-head is not ^?^sfigured, as those beauteous found- 
ers of the race of strong-minded women are fabled to 
have been, for the convenience of drawing the bow ; but 
I sympathize with the carver : — 

A flattering carver, who made it his care 

To carve busts as they ought to be, — not as they were.” 

My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf. Two 
great gangways made of spars and planks connect her 
with the wharf; and up and down these gangways, per- 
petually crowding to and fro and in and out, like ants, are 
the Emigrants who are going to sail in my Emigrant Ship. 
Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some 
with cheese and butter, some with milk and beer, some 
with boxes, beds, and bundles, some with babies, — nearly 
all with children, — nearly all with bran-new tin cans 
for their daily allowance of water, uncomfortably sugges- 
tive of a tin flavor in the drink. To and fro, up and down, 
aboard and ashore, swarming here and there and every- 
where, my Emigrants. And still as the Dock Gate swings 
upon its hinges, cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans 
appear, bringing more of my Emigrants, with more cab- 
bages, more loaves, more cheese and butter, more milk 
and beer, more boxes, beds, and bundles, more tin cans, 
and on those shipping investments accumulated compound 
interest of children. 


214 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to th-e great 
cabin, and find it in the usual condition of a cabin at that 
pass. Perspiring landsmen, with loose papers, ana with 
pens and inkstands, pervade it ; and the general appear- 
ance of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon’s funeral had 
just come home from the cemetery, and the disconsolate 
Mrs. Amazon’s trustees found the affairs in great disorder, 
and were looking high and low for the will. I go out on 
the poop-dock for air, and, surveying the emigrants on 
the deck below (indeed they are crowded all al out me, 
up there too), find more pens and inkstands in action, 
and more papers, and interminable complication respect- 
ing accounts with individuals for tin cans and what not. 
But nobody is in an ill temper, nobody is the worse for 
drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, 
nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping ; and down 
upon the deck, in every corner where it is possible to find a 
few square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people in every 
unsuitable attitude for writing are writing letters. 

Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in 
June. And these people are so strikingly different from 
all other people in like circumstances whom I have ever 
seen, that I wonder aloud, What would a stranger sup- 
pose these emigrants to be ! ” 

The vigilant bright face of the weather-browned captain 
of the Amazon is at my shoulder, and he Saji’s : ‘‘ What, 
indeed 1 The most of these came aboard yesterday even- 
ing. They came from various parts of England in small 
parties that had never seen one another before. Yet they 
had not been a couple of hours on board when they estab- 
lished their own police, made their own regulations, and 
set their own watches at all the hatchways. Before nine 
o’clock the ship was as orderly and as quiet as a man-of- 
war.” 

I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing 
going on with the most curious composure. Perfectly 
abstracted in the midst of the crowd ; while great casks 
were swinging aloft, and being lowered into the hold ; 
while hot agents were hurrying up and down, adjusting 
the interminable accounts ; while two hundred strangers 
were searching everywhere for two hundred other stran- 
gers, and were asking questions about them of two hun- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


215 


dred more ; while the children played up and down all the 
steps, and in and out among all the people’s legs, and 
were beheld, to the general dismay, toppling over all the 
dangerous places, — the letter-writers wrote on calmly. 
On the starboard side of the ship a grizzled man dictated 
a long letter to another grizzled man in an immense fur 
cap ; which letter was of so profound a quality, that it 
became necessary for the amanuensis at intervals to take 
off his fur cap in both his hands, for the ventilation of his 
brain, and stare at him who dictated, as a man of many 
mysteries who was worth looking at. On the larboard 
side a woman had covered a belaying-pin with a white 
cloth, to make a neat desk of it, and was sitting on a lit- 
tle box, writing with the deliberation of a book-keeper. 
Down upon her breast on the planks of the deck at this 
woman’s feet, with her head diving in under a beam of 
the bulwarks on that side, as an eligible place of refuge 
for her sheet of paper, a neat and pretty girl wrote for a 
good hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the surface 
occasionally for a dip of ink. Alongside the boat, close 
to me on the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh, well-grown 
country girl, was writing another letter on the bare deck 
Later in the day, when this self-same boat was filled with 
a choir who sang glees and catches for a long time, one 
of the singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically all the 
while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat while 
doing so. 

“ A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name 
for these people, Mr. Uncommercial,” says the captain. 

Indeed he would.” 

“If you hadn’t known, could you ever have sup- 
posed — ? ” 

“ How could 1 1 I should have said they were, in their 
degree, the pick and flower of England.” 

“ So should I,” says the captain. 

“ How many are they ? ” 

“ Eight hundred, in round numbers.” 

I went between-decks, where the families with children 
swarmed in the dark, where unavoidable confusion had 
been caused by the last arrivals, and where the confusion 
was increased by the little preparations for dinner that 
were going on in each group. A few women here and 


‘m THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 

there had got lost, and were laughing at it, and asking 
their way to their own people, or out on deck again. A 
few of the poor children were crying ; but otherwise the 
universal cheerfulness was amazing. We shall shake 
down by to-morrow.'^ “We shall come all right in a 
day or so.’^ “ We shall have more light at sea.^^ Such 

phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped my way among 
chests and barrels and beams and unstowed cargo and 
ring-bolts and Emigrants, down to the lower deck, and 
thence up to the light of day again and to my former 
station. 

Surely an extraordinary people in their power of self- 
abstraction I All the former letter- writers were still writ- 
ing calmly, and many more letter-writers had broken out 
in my absence. A boy with a bag of books in his hand 
and a slate under his arm emerged from below, concen- 
trated himself in my neighborhood (espying a convenient 
skylight for his purpose), and went to work at a sum as 
if he were stone deaf. A father and mother and several 
young children, on the main deck below me, had formed 
a family circle close to the foot of the crowded, restless 
gangway, where the children made a nest for themselves 
in a coil of rope, and the father and mother, she suckling 
the youngest, discussed family affairs as peaceably as if 
they were in perfect retirement. I think the most no- 
ticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass was 
their exemption from hurry. 

Eight hundred what ? “ Geese, villain ? Eight hun- 

dred Mormons. I, Uncommercial Traveller for the firm 
of Human Interest Brothers, had come aboard this Emi- 
grant Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-Day Saints 
were like ; and I found them (to the rout and overthrow 
of all my expectations) like what I now describe with 
scrupulous exactness. 

The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting 
them together, and in making the contract with my 
friends, the owners of the ship, to take them as far as 
New York on their way to tho Great Salt Lake, was 
pointed out to me. A compactly made, handsome man 
in black, rather short, with rich brown hair and beard, 
and clear bright eyes. From his speech I should set him 
down as American. Probably a man who had “knocked 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


217 


about the world pretty much. A man with a frank, 
open manner, and unshrinking look ; withal a man of 
great quickness. I believe he was wholly ignorant of my 
Uncommercial individuality, and consequently of my im- 
mense Uncommercial importance. 

Uncommercial. These are a very fine set of people you 
have brought together here. 

Mormon Agent. Yes, sir ; they are a very fine set of 
people. 

Uncommercial (looking about). Indeed, I think it 
would be difficult to find Eight hundred people together, 
anywhere else, and find so much beauty and so much 
strength and capacity for work among them. 

Mormon Agent (not looking about, but looking steadily 
at Uncommercial). I think so. — We sent out about a 
thousand more yesMay from Liverpool. 

Uncommercial. You are not going with these emi- 
grants ? 

Mormon Agent. No, sir. I remain. 

Uncommercial. But you have been in the Mormon 
Territory ? 

Mormon Agent. Yes ; I left Utah about three years 
ago. 

Uncommercial. It is surprising to me that these people 
are all so cheery, and make so little of the immense dis- 
tance before them. 

Mormon Agent. Well, you see ; many of ^em have 
friends out at Utah, and many of 'em look forward to 
meeting friends on the way. 

Uncommercial. On the way ? 

Mormon Agent. This way 't is. This ship lands 'em in 
New York City. Then they go on by rail right away be- 
yond St. Louis, to that part of the Banks of the Missouri 
where they strike the Plains. There wagons from the 
settlement meet 'em to bear 'em company on their journey 
'cross, — twelve hundred miles, about. Industrious peo- 
ple who come out to the settlement soon get wagons of 
their own, and so the friends of some of these will come 
down in their own wagons to meet 'em. They look for- 
ward to that greatly. 

Uncommercial. On their long journey across the Des- 
ert, do you arm them ? 


218 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Mormon Agent. Mostly you would find they have arms 
of some kind or another already with them. Such as had 
not arms we should arm across the Plains, for the general 
protection and defence. 

Uncommercial. Will these wagons bring down any 
produce to the Missouri ? 

Mormon Agent. Well, since the war broke out, we ^ve 
taken to growing cotton, and they ^11 likely bring down 
cotton to be exchanged for machinery. We want ma- 
chinery. Also we have taken to growing indigo, which 
is a fine commodity for profit It has been found that the 
climate on the farther side of the Great Salt Lake suits 
well for raising indigo. 

Uncommercial. I am told that these people now on 
board are principally from the South of England ? 

Mormon Agent. And from Wales. That ^s true. 

Uncommercial. Do you get many Scotch ? 

Mormon Agent. Not many. 

Uncommercial. Highlanders, for instance ? 

Mormon Agent. No, not Highlanders. They ain^t 
interested enough in universal brotherhood and peace and 
good-will. 

Uncommercial. The old fighting blood is strong in 
them ? 

Mormon Agent. Well, yes. And, besides, they Ve 
no faith. 

Uncommercial (who has been burning to get at the 
Prophet Joe Smith, and seems to discover an opening). 
Faith in — I 

Mormon Agent (far too many for Uncommercial). 
Well. — In anything I 

Similarly on this same head the Uncommercial under- 
went discomfiture from a Wiltshire laborer, — a simple, 
fresh-colored farm-laborer, of eight-and-thirty, who at one 
time stood beside him looking on at new arrivals, and 
with whom he held this dialogue : — 

Uncommercial* Would you mind my asking you what 
part of the country you come from ? 

Wiltshire. Not a bit. Theer I (exultingly.) I Ve 
worked all my life o' Salisbury Plain, right under the 
shadder o' Stonehenge. You might n't think it, but I 
haive. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


219 


Uncommercial. And a pleasant country too. 

Wiltshire. Ah I ’T is a pleasant country. 

Uncommercial Have you any family on board ? 

Wiltshire. Two children, — boy and gal. I am a 
widderer, I am, and I ^m going out alonger my boy and 
gal. That ^s my gal, and she ^s a fine gal o’ sixteert 
(pointing out the girl who is writing by the boat). I ’ll 
go and fetch my boy. I ’d like to show you my boy. 
(Here Wiltshire disappears, and presently comes back 
with a big shy boy of twelve, in a superabundance of boots, 
who is not at all glad to be presented.) He is a fine boy, 
too, and a boy fur to work I (Boy having undutifully 
bolted, Wiltshire drops him.) 

Uncommercial. It must cost you a great deal of money 
to go so far, three strong. 

Wiltshire. A power of money. Theer I Eight shil- 
len a week, eight shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put 
by out of the week’s wages for ever so long. 

Uncommercial. I wonder how you did it. 

Wiltshire (recognizing in this a kindred spirit). See 
theer now 1 I wonder how I done it I But what with a 
bit o’ subscription beer, and what with a bit o’ help theer, 
it were done at last, though I don’t hardly know how. 
Then it were unfort’net for us, you see, as we got kep’ 
in Bristol so long — nigh a fortnight, it were — on ac- 
counts of a mistake wi’ Brother Halliday. Swaller’d up 
money, it did, when we might have come straight on. 

Uncommercial (delicately approaching Joe Smith). You 
are of the Mormon religion, of course ? 

Wiltshire (confidently). 0 yes, I’m a Mormon. 
(Then reflectively.) I ’m a Mormon. (Then looking 
round the ship, feigns to descry a particular friend in an 
empty spot, and evades the Uncommercial forevermore.) 

After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my 
Emigrants were nearly all between-decks, and the Ama- 
zon looked deserted, a general muster took place. The 
muster was for the ceremony of passing the Government 
Inspector and the Doctor. Those authorities held their 
temporary state amidships by a cask or two ; and, knowing 
that the whole Eight hundred emigrants must come face 
to face with them, I took my station behind the two. 
They knew nothing whatever of me, I believe ; and my 


220 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


testimony to the unpretending gentleness and good-nature 
with which they discharged their duty may be of the 
greater worth. There was not the slightest flavor of the 
Circumlocution Office about their proceedings. 

The emigrants were now all on deck. They were 
densely crowded aft, and swarmed upon the poop-deck 
like bees. Two or three Mormon agents stood ready to 
hand them on to the Inspector, and to hand them forward 
when they had passed. By what successful means a spe- 
cial aptitude for organization had been infused into these 
people, I am, of course, unable to report. But I know 
that, even now, there was no disorder, hurry, or diffi- 
culty. 

All being ready, the first group are handed on. That 
member of the party who is intrusted with the passenger 
ticket for the whole has been warned by one of the 
agents to have it ready, and here it is in his hand. In 
every instance through the whole eight hundred, without 
an exception, this paper is always ready. 

Inspector (reading the ticket). Jessie Jobson, Sophro- 
nia Jobson, Jessie Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, Wil- 
liam Jobson, Jane Jobson, Matilda Jobson again, Brigham 
Jobson, Leonardo Jobson, and Orson Jobson. Are you 
all here ? (glancing at the party over his spectacles.) 

Jessie Jobson Number Two. All here, sir. 

This group is composed of an old grandfather and 
grandmother, thair married son and his wife, and their 
family of children. Orson Jobson is a little child asleep 
in his mother^s arms. The Doctor, with a kind word or 
so, lifts up the corner of the mother’s shawl, looks at the 
child’s face, and touches the little clenched hand. If we 
were all as well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would be a 
poor profession. 

Inspector. Quite right, Jessie Jobson. Take your 
ticket, Jessie, and pass on. 

And away they go. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, 
hands them on. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands 
next party up. 

Inspector (reading ticket again). Susannah Cleverly 
and William Cleverly. Brother and sister, eh ? 

Sister (young woman of business, hustling slow broth- 
er). Yes, sir. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


221 


Inspector. Yery good, Susannah Cleverly. Take your 
ticket, Susannah, and take care of it. 

And away they go. 

Inspector (taking ticket again). Sampson Dibble and 
Dorothy Dibble (surveying a very old couple, over his 
spectacles, with some surprise). Your husband quite 
blind, Mrs. Dibble ? 

Mrs. Dibble. Yes, sir, he be stone-blind. 

Mr. Dibble (addressing the mast). Yes, sir, I be 
stone-blind. 

Inspector. That ^s a bad job. Take your ticket, Mrs. 
Dibble, and donH lose it, and pass on. 

Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his fore- 
finger, and away they go. 

Inspector (taking ticket again). Anastatia Weedle. 

Anastatia (a pretty girl in a bright Garibaldi, this 
morning elected by universal suffrage the Beauty of the 
Ship). That is me, sir. 

Inspector. Going alone, Anastatia ? 

Anastatia (shaking her curls). I am with Mrs. Job- 
son, sir, but I Ve got separated for the moment. 

Inspector. Oh I You are with the Jobsons ? Quite 
right. ThatTl do. Miss Weedle. Don^t lose your 
ticket. 

Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting 
for her, and stoops and kisses Brigham Jobson, — who 
appears to be considered too young for the purpose by 
several Mormons rising twenty, who are looking on. 
Before her extensive skirts have departed from the casks, 
a decent widow stands there with four children, and so 
the roll goes. 

The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom 
there were many old persons, were certainly the least 
intelligent. Some of these emigrants would have bungled 
sorely but for the directing hand that was always ready. 
The intelligence here was unquestionably of a low order, 
and the heads were of a poor type. Generally the case 
was the reverse. There were many worn faces bearing 
traces of patient poverty and hard work, and there was 
great steadiness of purpose and much undemonstrative 
self-respect among this class. A few young men were 
going singly. Several young girls were going two or 


222 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


three together. These latter I found it very difficult to 
refer back, in my mind, to their relinquished homes and 
pursuits. Perhaps they were more like country milliners, 
and pupil teachers rather tawdrily dressed, than any 
other classes of young women. I noticed, among many 
little ornaments worn, more than one photograph-brooch 
of the Princess of Wales, and also of the late Prince Con- 
sort. Some single women of from thirty to forty, whom 
one might suppose to be embroiderers, or straw-bonnet 
makers, were obviously going out in quest of husbands, 
as finer ladies go to India. That they had any distinct 
notions of a plurality of husbands or wives, I do not be- 
lieve. To suppose the family groups of whom the major- 
ity of emigrants were composed polygamically possessed 
would be to suppose an absurdity manifest to any one 
who saw the fathers and mothers. 

I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) 
that most familiar kinds of handicraft trades were repre- 
sented here. Farm-laborers, shepherds, and the like, had 
their full share of representation, but I doubt if they pre- 
ponderated. It was interesting to see how the leading 
spirit in the family circle never failed to show itself, even 
in the simple process of answering to the names as they 
were called, and checking off the owners of the names. 
Sometimes it was the father, much oftener the mother, 
sometimes a quick little girl, second or third in order of 
seniority. It seemed to occur for the first time to some 
heavy fathers, what large families they had ; and their 
eyes rolled about, during the calling of the list, as if they 
half misdoubted some other family to have been smuggled 
into their own. Among all the fine, handsome children, 
I observed but two with marks upon their necks that were 
probably scrofulous. Out of the whole number of emi- 
grants, but one old woman was temporarily set aside 
by the Doctor, on suspicion of fever ; but even she after- 
wards obtained a clean bill of health. 

When all had “ passed, and the afternoon began to 
wear on, a black box became visible on deck, which box 
was in charge of certain personages also in black, of whom 
only one had the conventional air of an itinerant preacher. 
This box contained a supply of hymn-books, neatly printed 
and got up, published at Liverpool, and also in London 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


223 


at the “ Latter-Day Saints^ Book Depot, 30 Florence 
Street.’’ Some copies were handsomely bound ; the 
plainer were the more in request, and many were bought. 
The title ran, ‘‘ Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the 
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.” The Pref- 
ace, dated Manchester, 1840, ran thus : “ The Saints in 
this country have been very desirous for a Hymn Book 
adapted to their faith and worship, that they might sing 
the truth with an understanding heart, and express their 
praise, joy, and gratitude in songs adapted to the New and 
Everlasting Covenant. In accordance with their wishes, 
we have selected the following volume, which we hope 
will prove acceptable until a greater variety can be added. 
With sentiments of high consideration and esteem, we 
subscribe ourselves your brethren in the New and Ever- 
lasting Covenant, Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, John 
Taylor.” From this book — by no means explanatory to 
myself of the New and Everlasting Covenant, and not at 
all making my heart an understanding one on the subject 
of that mystery — a hymn was sung, which did not attract 
any great amount of attention, and was supported by a 
rather select circle. But the choir in the boat was very 
popular and pleasant ; and there was to have been a 
Band, only the Cornet was late in coming on board. In 
the course of the afternoon, a mother appeared from shore, 
in search of her daughter, “ who had run away with the 
Mormons.” She received every assistance from the In- 
spector, but her daughter was not found to be on board. 
The saints did not seem to me particularly interested in 
finding her. 

Towards five o’clock the galley became full of tea- 
kettles, and an agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the 
ship. There was no scrambling or jostling for the hot 
water, no ill-humor, no quarrelling. As the Amazon was 
to sail with the next tide, and as it would not be high 
water before two o’clock in the morning, I left her with 
aer tea in full action, and her idle Steam Tug lying by, de- 
puting steam and smoke, for the time being, to the Tea 
kettles. 

I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home 
by the captain, before he struck out into the wide Atlan- 
tic, highly extolling the behavior of these Emigrants, and 


224 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


the perfect order and propriety of all their social arrange- 
ments. What is in store for the poor people on the 
shores of the Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they 
are laboring under now, on what miserable blindness 
their eyes may be open>sd then, I do not pretend to say. 
But I went on board their ship to bear testimony against 
them if they deserved it, as I fully believed they would ; 
to my great astonishment they did not deserve it ; and 
my predispositions and tendencies must not affect me as 
an honest witness. I went over the Amazon’s side feel- 
ing it impossible to deny that, so far, some remarkablo 
influence had produced a remarkable result, which better- 
known influences have often missed.* 

* After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I happened to men- 
tion the experience it describes to Mr. Monckton Milnes, M. P. That 
gentleman then showed me an article of his writing, in “ The Edinburgh 
Review^' for January, 1862, which is highly remarkable for its philo- 
sophical and literary research concerning these Latter-Day Saints. I find 
in it the following sentences : “ The Select Committee of the House of 
Commons on emigrant ships for 1854 summoned the Mormon agent and 
passenger-broker before it, and came to the conclusion that no ships un- 
der the provisions of the ‘ Passengers Act * could be depended upon for 
comfort and security in the same degree as those under his administra- 
tion. The Mormon ship is a Family under strong and accepted disci- 
pline, with every provision for comfort, decorum, and internal peace.” 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


225 


XXI. 


THE CITY OP THE ABSENT. 


When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and 
have earned the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from 
Covent Garden into the City of London, after business 
hours there, on a Saturday, or — better yet — on a Sun- 
day, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners. It 
is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that 
they should be made in summer-time, for then the retired 
spots that I love to haunt are at their idlest and dullest. 
A gentle fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist 
sets off my favorite retreats to decided advantage. 

Among these. City Churchyards hold a high place. 
Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London, — 
churchyards sometimes so entirely detached from church- 
es, always so pressed upon by houses ; so small, so rank, 
so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who 
ever look down into them from their smoky windows. As 
I stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails, I can 
peel the rusty metal off like bark from an old tree. The 
illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, the grave-mounds 
lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the 
Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a dry-salt- 
er^s daughter and several common councilmen, has with- 
ered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust 
beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place. 
The discolored tiled roofs of the environing buildings 
stand so awry that they can hardly be proof against any 
stress of weather. Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to 
look down as they overhang, dubiously calculating how 
far they will have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what 
was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away, 
incrusted with toadstools. Pipes and spouts for carrying 
off the rain from the encompassing gables, broken or felo- 
15 


226 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


niously cut for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip 
and splash as it lists upon the weedy earth. Sometimes 
there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as I look in 
at the rails and meditate, I hear it working under an un- 
known hand with a creaking protest, as though the de- 
parted in the churchyard urged, “Let us lie here in 
peace ; don’t suck us up and drink us ! ” 

One of my best beloved churchyards I call the church- 
yard of Saint Ghastly Grim ; touching what men in gen- 
eral call it, I have no information. It lies at the heart of 
the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. 
It is a small, small churchyard, with a ferocious, strong, 
spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented 
with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought 
in stone ; but it likewise came into the mind of Saint 
Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes atop of the stone 
skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant 
device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust 
through and through with iron spears. Hence there is 
attraction of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, 
having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, 
I once felt drawn towards it in a thunder-storm at mid- 
night. “ Why not ? ” 1 said, in self-excuse. “ I have 
been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon ; is it 
worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the 
lightning ? ” I repaired to the Saint in a hackney-cab, 
and found the skulls most efiective, having the air of a 
public execution, and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to 
wink and grin with the pain of the spikes. Having no 
other person to whom to impart my satisfaction, I commu- 
nicated it to the driver. So far from being responsive, he 
surveyed me — he was naturally a bottle-nosed, red-faced 
man — with a blanched countenance. And as he drove 
me back, he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder 
through the little front window of his carriage, as mis- 
trusting that I was a fare originally from a grave in the 
churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim, who might have flitted 
home again without paying. 

Sometimes the queer Hall of some queer Company gives 
upon a churchyard such as this ; and when the Livery 
dine, you may hear them (if you are looking in through 
the iron rails, which you never are when I am) toasting 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


227 


their own Worshipful prosperity. Sometimes a whole- 
sale house of business, requiring much room for stowage, 
will occupy one or two or even all three sides of the 
enclosing space, and the backs of bales of goods will 
lumber up the windows as if they were holding some 
crowded trade-meeting of themselves within. Sometimes 
the commanding windows are all blank, and show no 
more sign of life than the graves below, — not so much, 
for they tell of what once upon a time was life undoubted- 
ly. Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard 
that I saw last summer, on a Volunteering Saturday 
evening towards eight of the clock, when with astonish- 
ment I beheld an old, old man and an old, old woman in 
it, making hay, — yes, of all occupations in this world, 
making hay I It was a very confined patch of church- 
yard lying between Gracechurch Street and the Tower, 
capable of yielding say an apronful of hay. By what 
means the old, old man and woman had got into it, with 
an almost toothless hay-making rake, I could not fathom. 
No open window was within view ; no window at all 
was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have 
enabled their old legs to descend from it ; the rusty 
churchyard gate was locked, the mouldy church was 
locked. Gravely among the graves they made hay all 
alone by themselves. They looked like Time and his 
wife. There was but the one rake between them, and they 
both had hold of it in a pastorally loving manner, and 
there was hay on the old woman’s black bonnet, as if the 
old man had recently been playful. The old man was 
quite an obsolete old man, in knee-breeches and coarse 
gray stockings, and the old woman wore mittens like 
unto his stockings in texture and in color. They took no 
heed of me as I looked on unable to account for them. 
The old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, 
the old man much too meek for a beadle. On an old 
tombstone in the foreground between me and them were 
two cherubim ; but for those celestial embellishments 
being represented as having no possible use for knee- 
breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have compared 
them with the haymakers, and sought a likeness. I 
coughed* and awoke the echoes ; but the haymakers never 
looked at me. They used the rake with a measured action, 


228 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


drawing the scanty crop towards them ; and so I was fain 
to leave them under three yards and a half of darkening 
sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by 
themselves. Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted 
a Medium. 

In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimen- 
sions, I saw, that self-same summer, two comfortable char- 
ity children. They were making love, — tremendous proof 
of the vigor of that immortal article, for they were in the 
graceful uniform under which English Charity delights to 
hide herself, — and they were overgrown, and their legs 
(his legs, at least ; for I am modestly incompetent to 
speak of hers) were as much in the wrong as mere pas- 
sive weakness of character can render legs. 0, it was a 
leaden churchyard, but no doubt a golden ground to those 
young persons I I first saw them on a Saturday evening, 
and, perceiving from their occupation that Saturday 
evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening 
sennight, and renewed the contemplation of them. They 
came there to shake the bits of matting which were 
spread in the church aisles ; and they afterwards rolled 
them up, he rolling his end, and she rolling hers, until 
they met, and, over the two once divided now united 
rolls, — sweet emblem I — gave and received a chaste 
salute. It was so freshening to find one of my faded 
churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I returned a 
second time, and a third, and ultimately this befell : They 
had left the church door open, in their dusting and ar- 
ranging. Walking in to look at the church, I became 
aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her in 
the reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up, 
exchanging tender discourse. Immediately both dived, 
and became as it were non-existent on this sphere. With 
an assumption of innocence I turned to leave the sacred 
edifice, when an obese form stood in the portal, puffily 
demanding Joseph, or, in default of Joseph, Celia. Tak- 
ing this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on 
pretence of showing him whom he sought, I gave time 
for the emergence of Joseph and Celia, who presently 
came towards us in the churchyard, bending under dusty 
matting, a picture of thriving and unconscious indus- 
try. It would be superfluous to hint that I have ever since 
deemed this the proudest passage in my life. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


229 


But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare 
indeed in my City churchyards. A few sparrows occa- 
sionally try to raise a lively chirrup in their solitary tree, 
— perhaps as taking a different view of worms from that 
entertained by humanity, — but they are flat and hoarse 
of voice, like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman, 
and all the rest of the Church-works when they are wound 
up for Sunday. Caged larks, thrushes, or blackbirds, 
hanging in neighboring courts, pour forth their strains 
passionately, as scenting the tree, trying to break out, 
and see leaves again before they die ; but their song is 
Willow, Willow, — of a churchyard cast. So little light 
lives inside the churches of my churchyards, when the 
two are coexistent, that it is often only by an accident, 
and after long acquaintance, that I discover their having 
stained glass in some odd window. The westering sun 
slants into the churchyard by some unwonted entry, a 
few prismatic tears drop on an old tombstone, and a win- 
dow that I thought was only dirty is for the moment all 
bejewelled. Then the light passes, and the colors die. 
Though even then, if there be room enough for me to fall 
back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of the Church 
Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming 
to look out with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at 
the distant shore of country. 

Blinking old men, who are let out of workhouses by 
the hour, have a tendency to sit on bits of coping-stone 
in these churchyards, leaning with both hands on their 
sticks, and asthmatically gasping. The more depressed 
class of beggars, too, bring hither broken meats, and 
munch. I am on nodding terms with a meditative turn- 
cock who lingers in one of them, and whom I suspect of 
a turn for poetry ; the rather as he looks out of temper 
when he gives the flreplug a disparaging wrench with 
that large tuning-fork of his, which would wear out the 
shoulder of his coat but for a precautionary piece of 
inlaid leather. Fire-ladders, which I am satisfied no- 
body knows anything about, and the keys of which were 
lost in ancient times, moulder away in the larger church- 
yards, under eaves like wooden eyebrows ; and so re- 
moved are those corners from the haunts of men and 
boys that once on a fifth of November I found a “ Guy 


230 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


trusted to take care of himself there, while his proprietors 
had gone to dinner. Of the expression of his face I can- 
not report, because it was turned to the wall ; but his 
shrugged shoulders and his ten extended fingers appeared 
to denote that he had moralized in his little straw chair 
on the mystery of mortality until he gave ii up as a bad 
job. 

You do not come upon these churchyards violently ; 
there are shades of transition in the neighborhood. An 
antiquated news shop, or barber^s shop, apparently bereft 
of customers in the earlier days of George the Third, 
would warn me to look out for one, if any discoveries in 
this respect were left for me to make. A very quiet 
court, in combination with an unaccountable dyer’s and 
scourer’s, would prepare me for a churchyard. An ex- 
ceedingly retiring public-house, with a bagatelle-board 
shadily visible in a sawdusty parlor shaped like an omni- 
bus, and with a shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, would 
apprise me that I stood near consecrated ground. A 
‘‘ Dairy,” exhibiting in its modest window one very little 
milk-can and three eggs, would suggest to me the cer- 
tainty of finding the poultry hard by, pecking at my fore- 
fathers. I first inferred the vicinity of Saint Ghastly 
Grim from a certain air of extra repose and gloom per- 
vading a vast stack of warehouses. 

From the hush of these places it is congenial to pass 
into the hushed resorts of business. Down the lanes I 
like to see the carts and wagons huddled together in re- 
pose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing 
in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard 
Street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of 
the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for 
telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious 
metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright 
copper shovels for shovelling gold. When I draw money, 
it never seems so much money as when it is shovelled at 
me out of a bright copper shovel. I like to say, ‘‘ In 
gold,” and to see seven pounds musically pouring out of 
the shovel like seventy ; the Bank appearing to remark to 
me, — I italicize appearing, — '‘If you want more of this 
yellow earth, we keep it in barrows at your service.” 
To think of the banker’s clerk with his deft finger turning 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


231 


the crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has taken 
in a fat roll out of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling 
of that delicious south-cash wind. ‘‘How will you have 
it ? I once heard this usual question asked at a Bank 
Counter of an elderly female habited in mourning and 
steeped in simplicity, who answered, open-eyed, crook- 
fingered, laughing with expectation, “ Anyhow I Call- 
ing these things to mind as I stroll among the Banks, I 
wonder whether the other solitary Sunday man I pass has 
designs upon the Banks. For the interest and mystery 
of the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that his 
confederate may be at this moment taking impressions of 
the keys of the iron closets in wax, and that a delightful 
robbery may be in course of transaction. About College 
Hill, Mark Lane, and so on towards the Tower, and Dock- 
ward, the deserted wine-merchants^ cellars are fine sub- 
jects for consideration ; but the deserted money-cellars of 
the Bankers, and their plate-cellars, and their jewel-cel- 
lars, — what subterranean regions of the Wonderful Lamp 
are these I And again : possibly some shoeless boy in 
rags passed through this street yesterday, for whom it is 
reserved to be a Banker in the fulness of time, and to be 
surpassing rich. Such reverses have been, since the 
days of Whittington, and were, long before. I want to 
know whether the boy has any foreglittering of that glit- 
tering fortune now, when he treads these stones, hungry. 
Much as I also want to know whether the next man to be 
hanged at Newgate yonder had any suspicion upon him 
that he was moving steadily towards that fate when he 
talked so much about the last man who paid the same 
great debt at the same small Debtors^ Door. 

Where are all the people who on busy working-days 
pervade these scenes ? The locomotive banker’s clerk 
who carries a black portfolio chained to him by a chain 
of steel, — where is he ? Does he go to bed with his 
chain on, — to church with his chain on, — or does he lay 
it by ? And if he lays it by, what becomes of his port- 
folio when he is unchained for a holiday ? The waste-paper 
baskets of these closed counting-houses would let me into 
many hints of business matters if I had the exploration of 
them ; and what secrets of the heart should I discover on 
the “pads” of the young clerks, — the sheets of car- 


232 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


tridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed between their 
writing and their desks I Pads are taken into confidence 
on the tenderest occasions ; and oftentimes when I have 
made a business visit, and have sent in my name from the 
outer office, have I had it forced on my discursive notice, 
that the officiating young gentleman has over and over 
again inscribed Amelia, in ink of various dates, on corners 
of his pad. Indeed, the pad may be regarded as the le- 
gitimate modern successor of the old forest-tree, whereon 
these young knights (having no attainable forest nearer 
than Epping) engrave the names of their mistresses. After 
all it is a more satisfactory process than carving, and can 
be oftener repeated. So these courts in their Sunday rest 
are courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to bethink my- 
self), dry as they look. And here is Garraway's, bolted 
and shuttered hard and fast ! It is possible to imagine the 
man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in a hayfield ; 
it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a clerk 
at church, without him ; but imagination is unable to 
pursue the men who wait at Garraway^s all the week for 
the men who never come. When they are forcibly put 
out of Garraway’s on Saturday night, — which they must 
be, for they never would go out of their own accord, — 
where do they vanish until Monday morning ? On the 
first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected to find 
them hovering about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and 
trying to peep into Garraway’s through chinks in the 
shutters, if not endeavoring to turn the lock of the door 
with false keys, picks, and screw-drivers. But the won- 
der is that they go clean away ! And, now I think of it, 
the wonder is that every working-day pervader of these 
scenes goes clean away. The man who sells the dogs’ 
collars and the little toy coal-scuttles feels under as great 
an obligation to go afar off as Glyn and Co., or Smith, 
Payne, and Smith. There is an old monastery-crypt un- 
der Garraway’s (I have been in it among the port wine), 
and perhaps Garraway’s, taking pity on the mouldy men 
who wait in its public room all their lives, gives them cool 
house-room down there over Sundays ; but the catacombs 
of Paris would not be large enough to hold the rest of the 
missing. This characteristic of London City greatly 
helps its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


233 


of business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it 
of being the Last Man. In my solitude, the ticket-porters 
being all gone with the rest, I venture to breathe to the 
quiet bricks and stones my confidential wonderment why 
a ticket-porter, who never does any work with his hands, 
is bound to wear a white apron ; and why a great Eccle- 
siastical Dignitary, who never does any work with his 
hands either, is equally bound to wear a black one. 


234 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XXII. 


AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE. 

Before the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten 
how many stage-coaches she said used to change horses 
in the town every day. But it was of little moment ; 
any high number would do as well as another. It had 
been a great stage-coaching town in the great stage- 
coaching times, and the ruthless railways had killed and 
buried it. 

The sign of the house was the Dolphin^s Head. Why 
only head, I don^t know ; for the Dolphin^s eflSgy at full 
length, and upside down, — as a Dolphin is always bound 
to be when artistically treated, though I suppose he is 
sometimes right side upward in his natural condition, — 
graced the sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty 
hooks outside the bow-window of my room, and was a 
shabby work. No visitor could have denied that the 
Dolphin was dying by inches, but he showed no bright 
colors. He had once served another master ; there was 
a newer streak of paint below him, displaying with incon- 
sistent freshness the legend. By J. Mellows. 

My door opened again, and J. Mellows^s representative 
came back. I had asked her what I could have for din- 
ner, and she now returned with the counter-question, what 
would I like ? As the Dolphin stood possessed of noth- 
ing that I do like, I was fain to yield to the suggestion 
of a duck, which I don^t like. J. Mellows^s representative 
was a mournful young woman, with one eye susceptible 
of guidance, and one uncontrollable eye ; which latter, 
seeming to wander in quest of stage-coaches, deepened 
the melancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped. 

This young woman had but shut the door on retiring 
again, when I bethought me of adding to my order the 
words, “with nice vegetables. Looking out at the door 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


235 


to give them emphatic utterance, I found her already in a 
state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking 
her teeth with a pin. 

At the Railway Station, seven miles off, I had been the 
subject of wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come 
here. And when I gave the direction, “ To the Rolphin^s 
Head,^^ I had observed an ominous stare on the counte- 
nance of the strong young man in velveteen who was the 
platform servant of the Company. He had also called to 
my driver at parting, “ All ri-ight I Don’t hang yourself 
when you get there, Geo-o-rge I” in a sarcastic tone, for 
which I had entertained some transitory thoughts of re- 
porting him to the General Manager. 

I had no business in the town, — I never have any 
business in any town, — but I had been caught by the 
fancy that I would come and look at it in its degeneracy. 
My purpose was fitly inaugurated by the Dolphin’s Head, 
which everywhere expressed past coachfulness and pres- 
ent coachlessness. Colored prints of coaches starting, 
arriving, changing horses, coaches in the sunshine, 
coaches in the snow, coaches in the wind, coaches in the 
mist and rain, coaches on the King’s birthday, coaches in 
all circumstances compatible with their triumph and vic- 
tory, but never in the act of breaking down or overturn- 
ing, pervaded the house. Of these works of art, some, 
framed and not glazed, had holes in them ; the varnish of 
others had become so brown and cracked that they looked 
like overdone pie-crust ; the designs of others were almost 
obliterated by the flies of many summers. Broken glass- 
es, damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and consignment 
of incurable cripples to places of refuge in dark corners, 
attested the desolation of the rest. The- old room on the 
ground-floor, where the passengers of the Highflyer used 
to dine, had nothing in it but a wretched show of twigs 
and flower^pots in the broad window, to hide the naked- 
ness of the land, and in a corner little Mellows’s peram- 
bulator, with even its parasol-head turned despondently 
to the wall. The other room, where post-horse com- 
pany used to wait while relays were getting ready down 
the yard, still held its ground, but was as ai^’less as I 
conceive a hearse to be ; insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hang- 
ing high against the partition (with spots on him like port 


236 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


wine, though it is mysterious how port wine ever got 
squirted up there), had good reason for perking his nose 
and sniffing. The stopperless cruets on the spindle- 
shanked sideboard were in a miserably dejected state, the 
anchovy sauce having turned blue some years ago, and 
the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it like a small model 
of a wooden leg) having turned solid. The old fraudulent 
candles, which were always being paid for and never 
used, were burnt out at last ; but their tall stilts of can- 
dlesticks still lingered, and still outraged the human intel- 
lect by pretending to be silver. The mouldy old unre- 
formed Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned up 
in the breast of his coat, and his back characteristically 
turned on bales of petitions from his constituents, was 
there too ; and the poker, which never had been among 
the fire-irons, lest post-horse company should overstir the 
fire, was not there, as of old. 

Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin^s Head, I found 
it sorely shrunken. When J. Mellows came into posses- 
sion, he had walled off half the bar, which was now a 
tobacco-shop with its own entrance in the yard, — the 
once glorious yard where the postboys, whip in hand and 
always buttoning their waistcoats at the last moment, 
used to come running forth to mount and away. A 
“Scientific Shoeing-Smith and Veterinary Surgeon had 
further encroached upon the yard ; and a grimly satirical 
Jobber, who announced himself as having to Let “ A neat 
one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,^^ had established his 
business, himself, and his family in a part of the exten- 
sive stables. Another part was lopped clean off from the 
Dolphin^s Head, and now comprised a chapel, a wheel- 
wright's, and a Young Men^s Mutual Improvement and 
Discussion Society (in a loft) ; the whole forming a black 
lane. No audacious hand had plucked down the vane 
from the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown 
rusty, and stuck at N — Nil ; while the score or two of 
pigeons that remained true to their ancestral traditions 
and the place had collected in a row on the roof-ridge of 
the only outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the 
inside pigeons tried to push the outside pigeon off. 
This I accepted as emblematical of the struggle for pos# 
and place in railway times. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


237 


Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered 
and pillared entrance to the Dolphin^s Yard, once redo- 
lent of soup and stable-litter, now redolent of musty dis- 
use, I paced the street. It was a hot day, and the little 
sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn down, and the 
more enterprising tradesmen had caused their Prentices 
to trickle water on the pavement appertaining to their 
frontage. It looked as if they had been shedding 
tears for the stage-coaches, and drying their ineffectual 
pocket-handkerchiefs. Such weakness would have been 
excusable ; for business was — as one dejected pork-man, 
who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the compli- 
ment by keeping him, informed me — “ bitter bad.^^ 
Most of the harness-makers and corn-dealers were gone 
the way of the coaches ; but it was a pleasant recogni- 
tion of the eternal procession of Children down that old 
original steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow, that those 
tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors of sweet- 
meats and cheap toys. The opposition house to the 
Dolphin, once famous as the New White Hart, had long 
collapsed. In a fit of abject depression, it had cast white- 
wash on its windows, and boarded up its front door, and 
reduced itself to a side entrance ; but even that had 
proved a world too wide for the Literary Institution 
which had been its last phase ; for the Institution had col- 
lapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its inscription 
on the White Hart’s front, all had fallen off but these : — 

L Y INS T 

— suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to the neigh- 
boring market-place, it seemed to have wholly relin- 
quished marketing to the dealer in crockery, whose pots 
and pans straggled half across it, and to the Cheap Jack 
who sat with folded arms on the shafts of his cart, super- 
ciliously gazing around, his velveteen waistcoat evidently 
harboring grave doubts whether it was worth his while to 
stay a night in such a place. 

The church-bells began to ring as I left this spot, but 
they by no means improved the case ; for they said in a 
petulant way, and speaking with some difficulty in their 
irritation, '' WnAT’s-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES ! ” Nor would 
they (I found on listening) ever vary their emphasis, save 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


in respect of growing more sharp and vexed, but invari- 
ably went on, WHAT^s-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES 1 — 

always beginning the inquiry with an unpolite abruptness. 
Perhaps from their elevation they saw the railway, and it 
aggravated them. 

Coming upon a coachmaker’s workshop, I began to look 
about me with a revived spirit, thinking that perchance I 
might behold there some remains of the old times of the 
town^s greatness. There was only one man at work, — a 
dry man, grizzled, and far advanced in years, but tall and 
upright, who, becoming aware of me looking on, straight- 
ened his back, pushed up his spectacles against his brown 
paper cap, and appeared inclined to defy me. To whom 
I pacifically said : — 

Good day, sir I 
What ? ” said he. 

** Good day, sir.'^ 

He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with 
me. — “ Was you a looking for anything ? ” he then asked, 
in a pointed manner. 

I was wondering whether there happened to be any 
fragment of an old stage-coach here.’^ 

Is that all ? ” 

That ^s all.^^ 

No, there ain^t.^' 

It was now my turn to say, “Oh I and I said it. 
Not another word did the dry and grizzled man say, but 
bent to his work again. In the coach-making days, the 
coach-painters had tried their brushes on a post beside 
him ; and quite a Calendar of departed glories was to be 
read upon it, in blue and yellow and red and green, some 
inches thick. Presently he looked up again. 

“ You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,^' was 
his querulous remark. 

I admitted the fact. 

“ I think it a pity you was not brought up to some- 
thing,^^ said he. 

I said I thought so too. 

Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his 
plane (for it was a plane he was at work with), pushed 
up his spectacles again, and came to the door. 

“ Would a po-shay do for you ? he asked. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


239 


** I am not sure that I understand what you mean.^^ 

“ Would a po-shay/^ said the coachmaker, standing 
close before me, and folding his arms in the manner of a 
cross-examining counsel, — “ would a po-shay meet the 
views you have expressed? Yes, or no ? ^^ 

“ Yes/^ 

Then you keep straight along down there till you see 
one. You T1 see one if you go fur enough. 

With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direc- 
tion I was to take, and went in and resumed his work 
against a background of leaves and grapes. For, although 
he was a soured man and a discontented, his workshop 
was that agreeable mixture of town and country, street 
and garden, which is often to be seen in a small English 
town. 

I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the 
Beer-shop with the sign of The First and Last, and was 
out of the town on the old London road. I came to the 
Turnpike, and I found it, in its silent way, eloquent re- 
specting the change that had fallen on the road. The 
Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy ; and the 
Turnpike-keeper, unable to get a living out of the tolls, 
plied the trade of a cobbler. Not only that, but his wife 
sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window of espial 
through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe 
to behold the grand London coaches coming on at a 
gallop, exhibited for sale little barber^s-poles of sweet- 
stuff in a sticky lantern. 

The political economy of the master of the turnpike 
thus expressed itself. 

How goes turnpike business, master ? said I to him, 
as he sat in his little porch, repairing a shoe. 

It don^t go at all, master,” said he to me. “ It ^s 
stopped.” 

That ^s bad,” said I. 

Bad ? ” he repeated. And he pointed to one of his 
sunburnt, dusty children, who was climbing the turnpike- 
gate, and said, extending his open right hand in remon- 
strance with Universal Nature. ^‘Five on ^em I ” 

But how to improve Turnpike business ? ” said I. 

“ There ^s a way, master,” said he, with the air of one 
who had thought deeply on the subject. 


240 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


I should like to know it/’ 

** Lay a toll on everything as comes through ; lay a 
toll on walkers. Lay another toll on everything as don’t 
come through ; lay a toll on them as stops at home.” 

“ Would the last remedy be fair ? ” 

‘‘ Fair ? Them as stops at home could come through 
if they liked, — could n’t they ? ” 

“ Say they could.” 

“Toll ’em. If they don’t come through, it’s their 
lookout. Anyways, — Toll ’em I ” 

Finding it was as impossible to argue with this finan- 
cial genius as if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
and consequently the right man in the right place, I 
passed on meekly. 

My mind now began to misgive me that the disap- 
pointed coachmaker had sent me on a wild-goose errand, 
and that there was no post-chaise in those parts. But 
coming within view of certain allotment-gardens by the 
roadside, I retracted the suspicion, and confessed that I 
had done him an injustice. For there I saw, surely, the 
poorest superannuated post-chaise left on earth. 

It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, 
and plumped down on the clayey soil among a ragged 
growth of vegetables. It was a post-chaise not even set 
straight upon the ground, but tilted over, as if it had 
fallen out of a balloon. It was a post-chaise that had 
been a long time in those decayed circumstances, and 
against which scarlet beans were trained. It was a post- 
chaise patched and mended with old tea-trays, or with 
scraps of iron that looked like them, and boarded up as 
to the windows, but having a knocker on the off-side 
door. Whether it was a post-chaise used as tool-house, 
summer-house, or dwelling-house, I could not discover, 
for there was nobody at home at the post-chaise when 
I knocked ; but it was certainly used for something, and 
locked up. In the wonder of this discovery, I walked 
round and round the post-chaise many times, and sat 
down by the post-chaise, waiting for further elucidation. 
None came. At last I made my way back to the old 
London road by the farther end of the allotment-gardens, 
and consequently at a point beyond that from which I 
had diverged. I had to scramble through a hedge and 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


241 


down a steep bank, and I nearly came down atop of a 
little spare man who sat breaking stones by the road- 
side. 

He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me myste- 
riously through his dark goggles of wire : — 

** Are you aware, sir, that you Ve been trespassing ? 

** I turned out of the way,^^ said I, in explanation, ** to 
look at that odd post-chaise. Do you happen to know 
anything about it ? ” 

I know it was many a year upon the road,^^ said he. 

So I supposed. Do you know to whom it belongs ? 

The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his 
heap of stones, as if he were considering whether he 
should answer the question or not. Then raising his 
barred eyes to my features as before, he said, — 

To me.^^ 

Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with 
a sufficiently awkward, Indeed I Dear me I Present- 
ly I added, “Do you — I was going to say “live 
there, but it seemed so absurd a question that I substi- 
tuted, “ live near here ? 

The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since 
we began to converse, then did as follows : he raised him- 
self by poising his figure on his hammer, and took his 
coat, on which he had been seated, over his arm. He 
then backed to an easier part of the bank than that by 
which I had come down, keeping his dark goggles silent- 
ly upon me all the time, and then shouldered his hammer, 
suddenly turned, ascended, and was gone. His face was 
so small, and his goggles were so large, that he left me 
wholly uninformed as to his countenance ; but he left me 
a profound impression that the curved legs I had seen 
from behind as he vanished were the legs of an old post- 
boy. It was not until then that I noticed he had been 
working by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like a 
tombstone erected over the grave of the London road. 

My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to 
pursue the goggles or the subject then, but made my way 
back to the Dolphin^s Head. In the gateway I found J. 
Mellows, looking at nothing, and apparently experiencing 
that it failed to raise his spirits. 

“ I don^t care for the town,^^ said J. Mellows, when I 
16 


242 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


complimented him on the sanitary advantages it may or 
may not possess ; “ I wish I had never seen the town I 
“ You don^t belong to it, Mr. Mellows ? 

** Belong to it I ’’ repeated Mellows. “ If I did n’t be- 
long to a better style of town than this, I ’d take and 
drown myself in a pail.” It then occurred to me that 
Mellows, having so little to do, was habitually thrown 
back on his internal resources, — by which I mean the 
Dolphin’s cellar. 

** What we want,” said Mellows, pulling off his hat, 
and making as if he emptied it of the last load of Disgust 
that had exuded from his brain before he put it on again 
for another load, — “what we want is a Branch. The 
Petition for the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room. Would 
you put your name to it ? Every little helps.” 

I found the document in question stretched out flat on 
the cofiee-room table by the aid of certain weights from 
the kitchen, and I gave it the additional weight of my un- 
commercial signature. To the best of my belief, I bound 
myself to the modest statement that universal traffic, hap- 
piness, prosperity, and civilization, together with un- 
bounded national triumph in competition with the foreign- 
er, would infallibly flow from the Branch. 

Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. 
Mellows if he could grace my dinner with a pint of good 
wine. Mr. Mellows thus replied : — 

“If I couldn’t give you a pint of good wine, I’d — 
there 1 — I ’d take and drown myself in a pail. But I was 
deceived when I bought this business, and the stock was 
higgledy-piggledy, and I have n’t yet tasted my way quite 
through it with a view to sorting it. Therefore, if you 
order one kind and get another, change till it comes right. 
For what,” said Mellows, unloading his hat as before, — 
“ what would you or any gentleman do, if you ordered 
one kind of wine and was required to drink another ? 
Why, you ’d (and naturally and properly, having the 
feelings of a gentleman), — you’d take and drown your- 
self in a pail I ” 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


243 


xxin. 


THE BOILED BEEF OP NEW ENGLAND. 

The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared 
with Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan, Geneva, — almost 
any important town on the Continent of Europe, — I find 
very striking after an absence of any duration in foreign 
parts. London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh, 
with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright 
little town like Bury St. Edmund’s. London is shabby in 
contrast with New York, with Boston, with Philadelphia. 
In detail, one would say it can rarely fail to be a disap- 
pointing piece of shabbiness to a stranger from any of 
those places. There is nothing shabbier than Drury Lane 
in Kome itself. The meanness of Regent Street, set 
against the great line of Boulevards in Paris, is as strik- 
ing as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar Square set 
against the gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde. 
London is shabby by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight. 
No Englishman knows what gaslight is until he sees the 
Rue de Rivoli and the Palais Royal after dark. 

The mass of London people are shabby. The absence 
of distinctive dress has, no doubt, something to do with it. 
The porters of the Vintners’ Company, the draymen, and 
the butchers, are about the only people who wear distinc- 
tive dresses ; and even these do not wear them on holi- 
days. We have nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness, 
convenience, or picturesqueness can compare with the 
belted blouse. As to our women ; — next Easter or Whit- 
suntide look at the bonnets at the British Museum or the 
National Gallery, and think of the pretty white French 
cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero. 

Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in 
London than in Paris, and yet the mass of the London 
population have a second-hand look which is not to be de- 


244 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


tected on the mass of the Parisian population. 1 think 
this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the 
least trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian 
idler, but dresses in the way of his own class, and for 
his own comfort. In London, on the contrary, the fash- 
ions descend ; and you never fully know how inconven- 
ient or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last 
descent. It was but the other day, on a race-course, that 
I observed four people in a barouche deriving great enter- 
tainment from the contemplation of four people on foot. 
The four people on foot were two young men and two 
young women ; the four people in the barouche were two 
young men and two young women. The four young 
women were dressed in exactly the same style ; the four 
young men were dressed in exactly the same style. 
Yet the two couples on wheels were as much amused 
by the two couples on foot as if they were quite uncon- 
scious of having themselves set those fashions, or of 
being at that very moment engaged in the display of 
them. 

Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends 
here in London, — and consequently in England, — and 
thence shabbiness arises ? Let us think a little, and be 
just. The ‘‘ Black Country ” round about Birmingham is 
a very black country : but is it quite as black as it has 
been lately painted ? An appalling accident happened at 
the People's Park near Birmingham, this last July, when 
it was crowded with people from the Black Country, — 
an appalling accident consequent on a shamefully danger- 
ous exhibition. Did the shamefully dangerous exhibition 
originate in the moral blackness of the Black Country, 
and in the Black People's peculiar love of the excitement 
attendant on great personal hazard, which they looked on 
at, but in which they did not participate ? Light is much 
wanted in the Black Country. 0, we are all agreed on 
that. But we must not quite forget the crowds of gen- 
tlefolks who set the shamefully dangerous fashion either. 
We must not quite forget the enterprising Directors of an 
Institution vaunting mighty educational pretences, who 
made the low sensation as strong as they possibly could 
make it by hanging the Blondin rope as high as they possi- 
bly could hang it. All this must not be eclipsed in the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


245 


blackness of the Black Country. The reserved seats high 
up by the rope, the cleared space below it, so that no one 
should be smashed but the performer, the pretence of slip- 
ping and falling off, the baskets for the feet and the sack 
for the head, the photographs everywhere, and the virtuous 
indignation nowhere, — all this must not be wholly swal- 
lowed up in the blackness of the jet-black country. 

Whatsoever fashion is set in England is certain to de- 
scend. This is the text for a perpetual sermon on care in 
setting fashions. When you find a fashion low down, 
look back for the time (it will never be far oft') when it 
was the fashion high up. This is the text for a perpet- 
ual sermon on social justice. From imitations of Ethio- 
pian Serenaders, to imitations of Prince's coats and waist- 
coats, you will find the original model in St. James's 
Parish. When the Serenaders become tiresome, trace 
them beyond the Black Country ; when the coats and 
waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to their 
source in the Upper Toady Eegions. 

Gentlemen's clubs were once maintained for purposes 
of savage party warfare ; workingmen's clubs of the same 
day assumed the same character. Gentlemen's clubs be- 
came places of quiet inoftensive recreation ; workingmen's 
clubs began to follow suit. If workingmen have seemed 
rather slow to appreciate advantages of combination 
which have saved the pockets of gentlemen, and enhanced 
their comforts, it is because workingmen could scarcely, 
for want of capital, originate such combinations without 
help ; and because help has not been separable from that 
great impertinence. Patronage. The instinctive revolt of 
his spirit against patronage is a quality much to be re- 
spected in the English workingman. It is the base of the 
base of his best qualities. Nor is it surprising that he 
.should be unduly suspicious of patronage, and sometimes 
resentful of it even where it is not, seeing what a flood of 
washy talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or with 
what complacent condescension the same devoted head has 
been smoothed and patted. It is a proof to me of his 
self-control, that he never strikes out pugilistically, right 
and left, when addressed as one of My friends, " or My 
assembled friends " ; that he does not become inappcasa 
ble, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees* 


246 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


biped in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him ; 
that any pretence of improving his mind does not instant- 
ly drive him out of his mind, and cause him to toss his 
obliging patron like a mad bull. 

For how often have I heard the unfortunate working- 
man lectured, as if he were a little charity-child, humid 
as to his nasal development, strictly literal as to his 
Catechism, and called by Providence to walk all his days 
in a station in life represented on festive occasions by a 
mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun ! What popguns 
of jokes have these ears tingled to hear let off at him, 
what asinine sentiments, what impotent conclusions, what 
spelling-book moralities, what adaptations of the orator^s 
insufferable tediousness to the assumed level of his under- 
standing I If his sledge-hammers, his spades and pick- 
axes, his saws and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, 
his forges, furnaces, and engines, the horses that he drove 
at his work, and the machines that drove him at his work, 
were all toys in one little paper box, and he the baby 
who played with them, he could not have been discoursed 
to more impertinently and absurdly than I have heard 
him discoursed to times innumerable. Consequently, not 
being a fool or a fawner, he has come to acknowledge his 
patronage by virtually saying ; Let me alone. If you 
understand me no better than that, sir and madam, let me 
alone. You mean very well, I dare say ; but I donH 
like it, and I won^t come here again to have any more 
of it.’^ 

Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of 
the workingman must be so far done by himself as that 
it is maintained by himself. And there must be in it 
no touch of condescension, no shadow of patronage. In 
the great working districts this truth is studied and un- 
derstood. When the American civil war rendered it ne- 
cessary, first in Glasgow, and afterwards in Manchester, 
that the working people should be shown how to avail 
themselves of the advantages derivable from system, and 
from the combination of numbers, in the purchase and the 
cooking of their food, this truth was above all things borne 
in mind. The quick consequence was, that suspicion and 
reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort resulted 
in an astonishing and a complete success. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


247 


Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July 
morning of this summer, as I walked towards Commer- 
cial Street (not Uncommercial Street), Whitechapel. The 
Glasgow and Manchester system had been lately set 
a-going there by certain gentlemen who felt an interest 
in its diflusion, and I had been attracted by the follow- 
ing handbill printed on rose-colored paper ; — 

SELF-SUPPORTING 

COOKING DEPOT 

FOR THE WORKING CLASSES, 

Commercial Street, Whitechapel, 

Where Accommodation is provided for Dining comfortably 
300 Persons at a time. 

Open from t a. m. till Y p. m. 

PRICES. 

All Articles of the Best Quality. 


Cup of Tea or Coffee One Penny 

Bread and Butter One Penny 

Bread and Cheese One Penny 

Slice of Bread One Half-penny or ... . One Penny 

Boiled Egg One Penny 

Ginger Beer One Penny 


The above Articles always ready. 

Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3 o^clock. 


Bowl of Scotch Broth One Penny 

Bowl of Soup One Penny 

Plate of Potatoes One Penny 

Plate of Minced Beef Twopence 

Plate of Cold Beef Twopence 


Plate of Cold Ham . . Twopence 

Plate of Plum Pudding, or Bice . . . . One Penny 

As the Econony of Cooking depends greatly upon the 
simplicity of the arrangements with which a great num- 
l»er of persons can be served at one time, the Upper 


248 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Room of this Establishment will be especially set apart 

for a 

Public DINNER every Day 
From 12 till 3 o^clock. 

Consisting of the follovoing Dishes : 

Bowl of Broth, or Soup, 

Plate of Cold Beef, or Ham, 

Plate of Potatoes, 

Plum Pudding, or Rice. 

FIXED CHARGE, 

THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED. 

N. B. — This Establishment is conducted on the strict- 
est business principles, with the full intention of making 
it self-supporting, so that every one may frequent it with 
a feeling of perfect independence. 

The assistance of all frequenting the Depot is confident- 
ly expected in checking anything interfering with the 
comfort, quiet, and regularity of the establishment. 

Please do not destroy this Handbill, but hand it to 
some other person whom it may interest. 

This Self-Supporting Cooking Depot (not a very good 
name, and one would rather give it an English one) had 
hired a newly built warehouse that it found to let ; there- 
fore it was not established in premises specially designed 
for the purpose. But at a small cost they were exceed- 
ingly well adapted to the purpose, being light, well ven- 
tilated, clean, and cheerful. They consisted of three 
large rooms. That on the basement story was the kitch- 
en ; that on the ground-floor was the general dining-room ; 
that on the floor above was the Upper Room referred to 
in the handbill, where the Public Dinner at fourpence 
halfpenny a head was provided every day. The cooking 
was done, with much economy of space and fuel, by 
American cooking stoves and by young women not pre- 
viously brought up as cooks ; the walls and pillars ol 
the two dining-rooms were agreeably brightened with or- 
namental colors ; the tables were capable of accommo- 
dating six or eight persons each ; the attendants were 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


249 


all young women, becomingly and neatly dressed, and 
dressed alike. I think the whole staff was female, with 
the exception of the steward or manager. 

My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this 
stafi*; because, if any establishment claiming to be self- 
supporting live upon the spoliation of anybody or any- 
thing, or eke out a feeble existence by poor mouths and 
beggarly resources (as too many so-called Mechanics^ In- 
stitutions do), I make bold to express my Uncommercial 
opinion that it has no business to live, and had better die. 
It was made clear to me, by the account-books, that every 
person employed was properly paid. My next inquiries 
were directed to the quality of the provisions purchased, 
and to the terms on which they were bought. It was 
made equally clear to me that the quality was the very 
best, and that all bills were paid weekly. My next in- 
quiries were directed to the balance-sheet for the last two 
weeks, — only the third and fourth of the establishment's 
career. It was made equally clear to me, that after every- 
thing bought was paid for, and after each week was charged 
with its full share of wages, rent, and taxes, depreciation 
of plant in use, and interest on capital at the rate of four 
per cent per annum, the last week had yielded a profit of 
(in round numbers) one pound ten, and the previous week 
a profit of six pounds ten. By this time I felt that I had 
a healthy appetite for the dinners. 

It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces 
had already begun to appear at a little window in the wall 
of the partitioned space where I sat looking over the 
books. Within this little window, like a pay-box at a 
theatre, a neat and brisk young woman presided to take 
money and issue tickets. Every one coming in must take 
a ticket. Either the fourpence-halfpenny ticket for the u{>- 
per room (the most popular ticket, I think), or a penny 
ticket for a bowl of soup, or as many penny tickets as he 
or she chose to buy. For three penny tickets one had 
quite a wide range of choice. A plate of cold boiled beef 
and potatoes ; or a plate of cold ham and potatoes ; or a 
plate of hot minced beef and potatoes ; or a bowl of soup, 
oread and cheese, and a plate of plum pudding. Touch- 
ing what they should have, some customers on taking their 
seats fell into a re very, — became mildly distracted, — 


25U 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


postponed decision, and said, in bewilderment, they would 
think of it. One old man I noticed when I sat among the 
tables in the lower room, who was startled by the bill of 
fare, and sat contemplating it as if it were something of a 
ghostly nature. The decision of the boys was as rapid as 
their execution, and always included pudding. 

There were several women among the diners, and sev- 
eral clerks and shopmen. There were carpenters and 
painters from neighboring buildings under repair, and 
there were nautical men, and there were, as one diner ob- 
served to me, “ some of most sorts. Some were solitary, 
some came two together, some dined in parties of three or 
four or six. The latter talked together, but assuredly no 
one was louder than at my club in Pall Mall. One young 
fellow whistled in rather a shrill manner while he waited 
for his dinner, but I was gratified to observe that he did 
BO in evident defiance of my Uncommercial individuality. 
Quite agreeing with him, on consideration, that I had no 
business to be there, unless I dined like the rest, I “ went 
in,^^ as the phrase is, for fourpence halfpenny. 

The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like 
the lower room, a counter in it, on which were ranged a 
great number of cold portions ready for distribution. Be- 
hind this counter the fragrant soup was steaming in deep 
cans, and the best cooked of potatoes were fished out of 
similar receptacles. Nothing to eat was touched with the 
hand. Every waitress had her own tables to attend to. 
As soon as she saw a new customer seat himself at one 
of her tables, she took from the counter all his dinner, — 
his soup, potatoes, meat, and pudding, — piled it up dex- 
terously in her two hands, set it before him, and took his 
ticket. This serving of the whole dinner at once had been 
found greatly to simplify the business of attendance, and 
was also popular with the customers, who were thus en- 
abled to vary the meal by varying the routine of dishes ; 
beginning with soup to-day, putting soup in the middle 
to-morrow, putting soup at the end the day after to-mor- 
row, and ringing similar changes on meat and pudding. 
The rapidity with which every new-comer got served was 
remarkable ; and the dexterity with which the waitress- 
es (quite new to the art a month before) discharged 
their duty was as agreeable to see as the neat smartness 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


251 


with which they wore their dress and had dressed their 
hair. 

If I seldom saw better waiting-, so I certainly never ate 
better meat, potatoes, or pudding. And the soup was an 
honest and stout soup, with rice and barley in it, and 
“little matters for the teeth to touch, as had been ob- 
served to me by my friend below stairs, already quoted. 
The dinner-service, too, was neither conspicuously hide- 
ous for High Art nor for Low Art, but was of a pleasant 
and pure appearance. Concerning the viands and their 
cookery, one last remark. I dined at my club in Pall 
Mall aforesaid, a few days afterwards, for exactly twelve 
times the money, and not half as well. 

The company thickened after one o^clock struck, and 
changed pretty quickly. Although experience of the place 
had been so recently attainable, and although there was 
still considerable curiosity out in the street and about the 
entrance, the general tone was as good as could be, and 
the customers foil easily into the ways of the place. It 
was clear to me, however, that they were there to have 
what they paid for, and to be on an independent footing. 
To the best of my judgment, they might be patronized 
out of the building in a month. With judicious visiting, 
and by dint of being questioned, read to, and talked at, 
they might even be got rid of (for the next quarter of a 
century) in half the time. 

This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with 
so many wholesome changes in the lives of the working 
people, and with so much good in the way of overcoming 
that suspicion which our own unconscious impertinence 
has engendered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise 
details as yet ; the rather, because it is indisputable that 
the managers of the Whitechapel establishment most 
thoroughly feel that they are upon their honor with the 
customers as to the minutest points of administration. 
But, although the American stoves cannot roast, they 
can surely boil one kind of meat as well as another, and 
need not always circumscribe their boiling talents within 
the limits of ham and beef. The most enthusiastic ad- 
mirer of those substantials would probably not object to 
occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton ; 
or, especially in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling 


252 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


with Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in holes. Anothei 
drawback on the Whitechapel establishment is the ab- 
sence of beer. Regarded merely as a question of policy, 
it is very impolitic, as having a tendency to send the 
workingmen to the public-house, where gin is reported to 
be sold. But there is a much higher ground on which this 
absence of beer is objectionable. It expresses distrust of 
the workingman. It is a fragment of that old mantle of 
patronage in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly 
wandering up and down the moral world, are sworn to 
muffle him. Good beer is a good thing for him, he says, 
and he likes it ; the Depot could give it him good, and he 
now gets it bad. Why does the Depot not give it him 
good ? Because he would get drunk. Why does the 
Depot not let him have a pint with his dinner, which would 
not make him drunk ? Because he might have had an- 
other pint, or another two pints, before he came. Now 
this distrust is an affront, is exceedingly inconsistent with 
the confidence the managers express in their handbills, 
and is a timid stopping-short upon the straight highway. 
It is unjust and unreasonable, also. It is unjust, because 
it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken 
man. It is unreasonable, because any one at all experi- 
enced in such things knows that the drunken workman 
does not get drunk where he goes to eat and drink, but 
where he goes to drink, — expressly to drink. To suppose 
that the workingman cannot state this question to himself 
quite as plainly as I state it here is to suppose that he 
is a baby, and is again to tell him, in the old wearisome, 
condescending, patronizing way, that he must be goody- 
poody, and do as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a manny- 
panny or a voter-poter, but fold his handy-pandys, and be 
a childy-pildy. 

I found, from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self- 
Supporting Cooking Depot, that every article sold in it, 
even at the prices I have quoted, yields a certain small 
profit ! Individual speculators are of course already in 
the field, and are, of course, already appropriating the 
name. The classes for whose benefit the real depots are 
designed will distinguish between the two kinds of enter- 
prise. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


?53 


xxiy. 


CHATHAM DOCK- YARD. 

There are some small out-of-the-way landing-places on 
the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my 
summer idling. Running water is favorable to day- 
dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of running 
water for mine. I like to watch the great ships standing 
out to sea or coming home richly laden, the active little 
steam-tugs confidently puffing with them to and from the 
sea horizon, the fleet of barges that seem to have plucked 
their brown and russet sails from the ripe trees in the land- 
scape, the heavy old colliers, light in ballast, floundering 
down before the tide, the light screw barks and schooners 
imperiously holding a straight course while the others 
patiently tack and go about, the yachts with their tiny 
hulls and great white sheets of canvas, the little sailing- 
boats bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure or 
business, and — as it is the nature of little people to do 
— making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs. 
Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to 
think about them, or even so much as to see them, unless 
it perfectly suits my humor. As little am I obliged to 
hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, 
the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steamship 
paddles farther away yet. These, with the creaking little 
jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and 
low-water marks in the, mud, and the broken causeway, 
and the broken bank, and the broken stakes and piles 
leaning forward as if they were vain of their personal ap- 
pearance and looking for their reflection in the water, 
will melt into any train of fancy Equally adaptable to 
any purpose or to none are the pasturing sheep and kine 
upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around 
me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home from the 


254 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


rich harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing, 
and looks as melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it 
had n^t agreed with him. Everything within the range 
of the senses will, by the aid of the running water, lend 
itself to everything beyond that range, and work into a 
drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but for which 
there is no exact definition. 

One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can 
see the Nore Light from it with my pocket-glass), from 
which fort mysteriously emerges a boy to whom I am 
much indebted for additions to my scanty stock of knowl- 
edge. He is a young boy, with an intelligent face burnt 
to a dust color by the summer sun, and with crisp hair of 
the same hue. He is a boy in whom I have perceived 
nothing incompatible with habits of studious inquiry and 
meditation, unless an evanescent black eye (I was deli- 
cate of inquiring how occasioned) should be so considered. 
To him am I indebted for ability to identify a Custom- 
House boat at any distance, and for acquaintance with all 
the forms and ceremonies observed by a homeward-bound 
Indiaman coming up the river, when the Custom-House 
officers go aboard her. But for him, I might never have 
heard of “ the dumb ague,^^ respecting which malady I 
am now learned. Had I never sat at his feet, I might 
have finished my mortal career and never known that 
when I see a white horse on a bargees sail, that barge is 
a lime barge. For precious secrets in reference to beer 
am I likewise beholden to him, involving warning against 
the beer of a certain establishment, by reason of its hav- 
ing turned sour through failure in point of demand ; 
though my young sage is not of opinion that similar dete- 
rioration has befallen the ale. He has also enlightened 
me touching the mushrooms of the marshes, and has 
gently reproved my ignorance in having supposed them 
to be impregnated with salt. His manner of imparting 
information is thoughtful, and appropriate to the scene. 
As he reclines beside me, he pitches into the river a little 
stone, or piece of grit, and then delivers himself oracu- 
larly, as though he spoke out of the centre of the spread- 
ing circle that it makes in the water. He never improves 
my mind without observing this formula. 

With the wise boy — whom I know by no other name 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


255 


than the Spirit of the Fort — I recently consorted on a 
breezy day when the river leaped about us and was full 
of life. I had seen the sheaved corn carrying* in the 
golden fields as I came down to the river ; and the rosy 
farmer, watching his laboring-men in the saddle on his cob, 
had told me how he had reaped his two hundred and sixty 
acres of long-strawed corn last week, and how a better 
week’s work he had never done in all his days. Peace 
and abundance were on the country-side in beautiful forms 
and beautiful colors, and the harvest seemed even to be 
sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea in the yellow- 
laden barges that mellowed the distance. 

It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, direct- 
ing his remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately 
lying in that reach of the river, enriched my mind with 
his opinions on naval architecture, and informed me that 
he would like to be an engineer. I found him up to every- 
thing that is done in the contracting line by Messrs. Peto 
and Brassey, — cunning in the article of concrete, — mel- 
low in the matter of iron, — great on the subject of gun- 
nery. When he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he 
left me not a leg to stand on ; and I can never sufficiently 
acknowledge his forbearance with me in my disabled state. 
While he thus discoursed, he several times directed his 
eyes to one distant quarter of the landscape, and spoke 
with vague mysterious awe of “ the Yard.” Pondering 
his lessons after we had parted, I bethought me that the 
Yard was one of our large public Dock-Yards, and that it 
lay hidden among the crops down in the dip behind the 
windmills, as if it modestly kept itself out of view in 
peaceful times, and sought to trouble no man. Taken 
with this modesty on the part of the Yard, I resolved to 
improve the Yard’s acquaintance. 

My good opinion of the Yard’s retiring character was 
not dashed by nearer approach. It resounded with the 
noise of hammers beating upon iron ; and the great sheds 
or slips under which the mighty men-of-war are built 
loomed business-like when contemplated from the opposite 
side of the river. For all that, however, the Yard made 
no display, but kept itself snug under hillsides of corn- 
fields, hop gardens, and orchards ; its great chimneys 
smoking with a quiet — almost a lazy — air, like giants 


256 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Bmoking tobacco ; and the great Shears moored off , 
looking meekly and inoffensively out of proportion, L\e 
the Giraffe of the machinery creation. The store of can- 
non on the neighboring gun-wharf had an innocent, toy- 
like appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on duty 
over them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work move- 
ment. As the hot sunlight sparkled on him. he might 
have passed for the identical little man who had the little 
gun, and whose bullets they were made of lead, lead, 
lead. 

Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a 
diift of chips and weed had been trying to land .jefore r^e, 
and had not succeeded, but had got into a corner instead, 
I found the very street posts to be cannon, and the areni- 
tectural ornaments to be shells. And so I came to tee 
Yard, which was shut up tight and strong with great 
folded gates, like an enormous patent safe. These gates 
devouring me, I became digested into the Yard ; and it 
had, at first, a clean-swept, holiday air, as if it had given 
over work until next war-time. Though indeed a quantity 
of hemp for rope was tumbling out of storehouses, even 
there, which would hardly be lying like so much hay on 
the white stones if the Yard were as placid as it pre- 
tended. 

Ding, Clash, Dong, Bang, Boom, Rattle, Clash, Bang, 
Clink, Bang, Dong, Bang, Clatter, Bang, Bang, BANG I 
What on earth is this ! This is, or soon will be, the 
Achilles, iron armor-plated ship. Twelve hundred men 
are working at her now ; twelve hundred men working on 
stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, un- 
der her keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within 
her and without, crawling and creeping into the finest 
curves of her lines wherever it is possible for men to 
twist. Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers, calkers, 
armorers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights ; twelve hundred 
dingers, dashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers, 
bangers, bangers 1 Yet all this stupendous uproar around 
the rising Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with 
which the perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dread- 
ful day when the full work is in hand for which this is 
but note of preparation, — the day when the scuppers that 
are now fitting like great, dry, thirsty conduit-pipes shall 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


257 


run red. All these busy figures between decks, dimly 
seen bending at their work in smoke and fire, are as noth- 
ing to the figures that shall do work here of another kind 
in smoke and fire that day. These steam-worked engines 
alongside, helping the ship by travelling to and fro, and 
wafting tons of iron plates about, as though they were so 
many leaves of trees, would be rent limb from limb if they 
stood by her for a minute then. To think that this 
Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank and oaken 
chest, can ever swim or roll I To think that any force of 
wind and wave could ever break her I To think that 
wherever I see a glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of 
her side from within, — as I do now, there, and there, 
and there ! — and two watching men on a stage without, 
with bared arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely, 
and repeat their blows until it is black and flat, I see a 
rivet being driven home, of which there are many in every 
iron plate, and thousands upon thousands in the ship I 
To think that the difiSculty I experience in appreciating 
the ship^s size when I am on board arises from her being 
a series of iron tanks and oaken chests : so that internally 
she is ever finishing and ever beginning, and half of her 
might be smashed, and yet the remaining half suffice and 
be sound. Then, to go over the side again and down 
among the ooze and wet to the bottom of the dock, in the 
depths of the subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays 
that hold her up, and to see the immense mass bulging 
out against the upper light, and tapering down towards 
me, is, with great pains and much clambering, to arrive 
at an impossibility of realizing that this is a ship at all, 
and to become possessed by the fancy that it is an enor- 
mous immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre 
(say that at Verona), and almost filling it! Yet what 
would even these things be without the tributary work- 
' shops and their mechanical powers for piercing the iron 
plates — four inches and a half thick — for rivets, shaping 
them under hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns 
of the ship^s lines, and paring them away, with knives 
shaped like the beaks of strong and cruel birds, to the 
nicest requirements of the design ! These machines of tre- 
mendous force, so easily directed by one attentive face 
and presiding hand, seem to me to have in them some- 
It 


258 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


thing of the retiring character of the Yard. Obedient 
monster, please to bite this mass of iron through and 
through, at equal distances, where these regular chalk- 
marks are, all round. Monster looks at its work, and, 
lifting its ponderous head, replies : ‘‘I don^t particularly 
want to do it ; but if it must be done — I ’’ The solid 
metal wriggles out, hot from the monster’s crunching 
tooth, and it is done. Dutiful monster, observe this 
other mass of iron. It is required to be pared away, ac- 
cording to this delicately lessening and arbitrary line, 
which please to look at.” Monster (who has been in a 
revery) brings down its blunt head, and, much in the 
manner of Doctor Johnson, closely looks along the line, 
— very closely, being somewhat near-sighted. ‘‘I don’t 
particularly want to do it ; but if it must be done — ! ” 
Monster takes another near-sighted look, takes aim, and 
the tortured piece writhes off, and falls, a hot, tight-twisted 
snake, among the ashes. The making of the rivets is 
merely a pretty round game, played by a man and a boy 
who put red-hot barley-sugar in a Pope Joan board, and 
immediately rivets fall out of window ; but the tone of the 
great machines is the tone of the great Yard and the great 
countrj^ : ‘‘We don’t particularly want to do it ; but if it 
must be done — ! ” 

How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever 
be held by such comparatively little anchors as those in- 
tended for her, and lying near her here, is a mystery of 
seamanship which I will refer to the wise boy. For my 
own part, I should as soon have thought of tethering an 
elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the 
Zoological Gardens to my shirt-pin. Yonder in the river, 
alongside a hulk, lie two of this ship’s hollow iron masts. 
They are large enough for the eye, I find, and so are all 
her other appliances. I wonder why only her anchors 
look small. ^ 

I have no present time to think about it, for 1 am going 
to see the workshops where they make all the oars used 
in the British Navy. A pretty large pile of building, I 
opine, and a pretty long job I As to the building, 1 am 
soon disappointed, because the work is all done in one 
loft. And as to a long job ? — what is this ? Two rath- 
er large mangles, with a swarm of butterflies hovering 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


259 


over them ? What can there be in the mangles that at- 
tracts butterflies ? 

Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, 
but intricate machines, set with knives and saws and 
planes, which cut smooth and straight here, and slantwise 
there, and now cut such a depth, and now miss cutting 
altogether, according to the predestined requirements of 
the pieces of wood that are pushed on below them, — 
each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is roughly 
adapted to that purpose before it takes its final leave of 
far-off forests, and sails for England. Likewise I discern 
that the butterflies are not true butterflies, but wooden 
shavings, which, being spirted up from the wood by the 
violence of the machinery, and kept in rapid and not equal 
movement by the impulse of its rotation on the air, flutter 
and play, and rise and fall, and conduct themselves as 
like butterflies as heart could wish. Suddenly the noise 
and motion cease, and the butterflies drop dead. An oar 
has been made since I came in, wanting the shaped hau- 
dle. As quickly as I can follow it with my eye and 
thought, the same oar is carried to a turning-lathe. A 
whirl and a nick I Handle made. Oar finished. 

The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery 
need no illustration, but happen to have a pointed illustra- 
tion to-day. A pair of oars of unusual size chance to be 
wanted for a special purpose, and they have to be made 
by hand. Side by side with the subtle and facile ma- 
chine, and side by side with the fast-growing pile of oars 
on the floor, a man shapes out these special oars with an 
axe. Attended by no butterflies, and chipping and dint- 
ing by comparison as leisurely as if he were a laboring 
Pagan getting them ready against his decease, at three- 
score and ten, to take with him as a present to Charon for 
his boat, the man (aged about thirty) plies his task. The 
machine would make a regulation oar while the man wipes 
his forehead. The man might be buried in a mound made 
of the strips of thin, broad, wooden ribbon torn from the 
wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall from the clock, 
before he had done a forenoon^s work with his axe. 

Passing from this wonderful sight to the ships again, — 
for my heart, as to the Yard, is where the ships are, — I 
notice certain unfinished wooden walls left seasoning on the 


260 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


stocks, pending the solution of the merits of the wood and 
iron question, and having an air of biding their time with 
surly confidence. The names of these worthies are set up 
beside them, together with their capacity in guns, — a 
custom highly conducive to ease and satisfaction in social 
intercourse if it could be adapted to mankind. By a 
plank more gracefully pendulous than substantial, I make 
bold to go aboard a transport ship (iron screw) just sent 
in from the contractor's yard to be inspected and passed. 
She is a very gratifying experience, in the simplicity and 
humanity of her arrangements for troops, in her provision 
for light and air and cleanliness, and in her care for wo- 
men and children. It occurs to me, as I explore her, that 
I would require a handsome sum of money to go aboard hei 
at midnight by the Dock-Yard bell, and stay aboard alone 
till morning ; for surely she must be haunted by a crowd of 
ghosts of obstinate old martinets, mournfully flapping their 
cherubic epaulets over the changed times. Though still 
we may learn, from the astounding ways and means in 
our Yards now, more highly than ever to respect the fore- 
fathers who got to sea, and fought the sea, and held the 
sea, without them. This remembrance putting me in the 
best of tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her 
copper, and generally dim and patched, I pull off my hat 
to her. Which salutation, a callow and downy-faced 
young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment, per- 
ceiving, appropriates, — and to which he is most heartily 
welcome, I am sure. 

Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the 
steam circular saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, 
and saws of eccentric action, I come to the sauntering 
part of my expedition, and consequently to the core of my 
Uncommercial pursuits. 

Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet 
with tokens of its quiet and retiring character. There is 
a gravity upon its red-brick offices and houses, a staid 
pretence of having nothing worth mentioning to do, an 
avoidance of display, which I never saw out of England. 
The white stones of the pavement present no other trace 
of Achilles and his twelve hundred banging men (not one 
of whom strikes an attitude) than a few occasional echoes. 
But for a whisper in the air suggestive of sawdu^^t and 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


261 


shavings, the oar-making and the saws of many move- 
ments might be miles away. Down below here is the 
great reservoir of water where timber is steeped in vari- 
ous temperatures, as a part of its seasoning process. 
Above it, on a tram-road supported by pillars, is a Chinese 
Enchanter’s Car, which fishes the logs up when sufficiently 
steeped, and rolls smoothly away with them to stack them. 
When I was a child (the Yard being then familiar to me), 
I used to think that I should like to play at Chinese En- 
chanter, and to have that apparatus placed at my disposal 
for the purpose by a beneficent country. I still think that 
T should rather like to try the effect of writing a book in 
it. Its retirement is complete, and to go gliding to and 
fro among the stacks of timber would be a convenient kind 
of travelling in foreign countries, — among the forests of 
North America, the sodden Honduras swamps, the dark 
pine woods, the Norwegian frosts, and the tropical heats, 
rainy seasons, and thunder-storms. The costly store of 
timber is stacked and stowed away in sequestered places, 
with the pervading avoidance of fiourish or efiect. It 
makes as little of itself as possible, and calls to no one. 

Come and look at me 1 ” And yet it is picked out from 
the trees of the world ; picked out for length, picked out 
for breadth, picked out for straightness, picked out for 
crookedness, chosen with an eye to every need of ship and 
boat. Strangely twisted pieces lie about, precious in the 
sight of shipwrights. Sauntering through these groves, 
I come upon an open glade where workmen are examining 
some timber recently delivered. Quite a pastoral scene, 
with a background of river and windmill I And no more 
like War than the American States are at present like an 
Union. 

Sauntering among the rope-making, I am spun into a 
state of blissful indolence, wherein my rope of life seems 
to be so untwisted by the process as that I can see back to 
very early days indeed, when my bad dreams — they were 
frightful, though my more mature understanding has never 
made out why — were of an interminable sort of rope- 
making, with long, minute filaments for strands, which, 
when they were spun home together close to my eyes, 
occasioned screaming. Next I walk among the quiet lofts 
of stores, — of sails, spars, rigging, ships’ boats, — de- 


26-2 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


termined to believe that somebody in authority wears a 
girdle, and bends beneath the weight of a massive bunch 
of keys, and that, when such a thing is wanted, he comes, 
telling his keys like Blue-Beard, and opens such a door. 
Impassive as the long lofty look, let the electric battery 
send down the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly 
open, and such a fleet of armed ships, under steam and 
under sail, shall burst forth as will charge the old Med- 
way, — where the merry Stuart let the Dutch come, while 
his not so merry sailors starved in the streets, — with 
something worth looking at to carry to the sea. Thus I 
idle round to the Medway again, where it is now flood- 
tide ; and I find the river evincing a strong solicitude to 
force a way into the dry-dock where Achilles is waited 
on by the twelve hundred bangers, with intent to bear 
the whole away before they are ready. 

To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it ; for I 
make my way to the gates through a little quiet grove 
of trees, shading the quaintest of Dutch landing-places, 
where the leaf-speckled shadow of a shipwright just 
passing away at the farther end might be the shadow of 
Russian Peter himself. So the doors of the great patent 
safe at last close upon me, and I take boat again, — some- 
how thinking, as the oars dip, of braggart Pistol and his 
brood, and of the quiet monsters of the Yard, with their 
“We don’t particularly want to do it ; but if it must be 
done — ! ” Scrunch. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


263 


XXV. 

TS THE FRENCH-FLKMISH COUNTRY. 

** It is neither a bold nor a diversified country/^ said 
I to myself, this country which is three quarters Flem- 
ish, and a quarter French ; yet it has its attractions too. 
Though great lines of railway traverse it, the trains leave 
it behind, and go puffing off to Paris and the South, to 
Belgium and Germany, to the Northern Sea-coast of 
France, and to England, and merely smoke it a little in 
passing. Then I don^t know it, and that is a good rea- 
son for being here ; and I can’t pronounce half the long 
queer names I see inscribed over the shops, and that is 
• another good reason for being here, since I surely ought 
to learn how.” In short, I was ‘‘here,” and I wanted 
an excuse for not going away from here, and I made it 
to my satisfaction, and stayed here. 

What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. 
Salcy is of no moment, though I own to encountering that 
gentleman’s name on a red bill on the wall before I made 
up my mind. Monsieur P. Salcy, “ par permission do 
M. le Maire,” had established his theatre in the white- 
washed Hotel de Ville, on the steps of which illustrious 
edifice I stood. And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged di- 
rector of such theatre, situate in “ the first theatrical ar- 
rondissement of the department of the North,” in^iied 
French-Flemish mankind to come and partake of the intel* 
lectual banquet provided by his family of dramatic ar- 
tists, fifteen subjects in number. “ La Famille P. Salcy, 
composee d’artistes dramatiques, au nombre de 15 su- 
jets.” 

Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, 
and withal an untidy country, but pleasant enough to 
ride in when the paved roads over the flats and through 
the hollows are not too deep in black mud. A country 


264 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


BO sparely inhabited, that I wonder where the peasants 
who till and sow and reap the ground can possibly dwell, 
and also by what invisible balloons they are conveyed 
from their distant homes into the fields at sunrise and 
back again at sunset. The occasional few poor cottages 
and farms in this region surely cannot aflbrd shelter to 
the numbers necessary to the cultivation ; albeit the work 
is done so very deliberately, that on one long harvest day 
I have seen, in twelve miles, about twice as many men 
and women (all told) reaping and binding. Yet have I 
seen more cattle, more sheep, more pigs, and all in bet- 
ter case, than where there is purer French spoken ; and 
also better ricks, — round, swelling, peg-top ricks, well 
thatched, — not a shapeless brown heap, like the toast 
out of a Giant^s toast-and-water, pinned to the earth with 
one of the skewers out of his kitchen. A good custom 
they have about here, likewise, of prolonging the sloping 
tiled roof of farm-house or cottage so that it overhangs 
three or four feet, carrying off the wet, and making a 
good drying-place wherein to hang up herbs, or imple- 
ments, or what not. A better custom than the popular 
one of keeping the refuse-heap and puddle close before 
the house door ; which, although I paint my dwelling 
never so brightly blue (and it cannot be too blue for me, 
hereabouts), will bring fever inside my door. Wonderful 
poultry of the French-Flemish country, why take the 
trouble to he poultry ? Why not stop short at eggs in 
the rising generation, and die out, and have done with it ? 
Parents of chickens have I seen this day, followed by 
their wretched young families, scratching nothing out of 
the mud with an air, — tottering about on legs so scrag- 
gy and weak that the valiant word “ drumsticks be- 
comes a mockery when applied to them, and the crow of 
the lord and master has been a mere dejected case of 
croup. Carts have I seen, and other agricultural instru- 
ments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous. Poplar-trees by 
the thousand fringe the fields, and fringe the end of the 
flat landscape, so that I feel, looking straight on before 
me, as if, when I pass the extremest fringe on the low 
horizon, I shall tumble over into space. Little white- 
washed black holes of chapels, with barred doors and 
Flemish inscriptions, abound at roadside corners, and of' 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


266 


ten they are garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, 
like children's swords ; or, in their default, some hollow 
old tree, with a saint roosting in it, is similarly decorated, 
or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined aloft in 
a sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that we are deficient 
in such decoration in the town here, for over at the 
church yonder, outside the building, is a scenic represen- 
tation of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and 
stones, and made out with painted canvas and wooden 
figures ; the whole surmounting the dusty skull of some 
holy personage (perhaps) shut up behind a little ashy 
iron grate, as if it were originally put there to be cooked, 
and the fire had long gone out. A windmilly country 
this, though the windmills are so damp and rickety, that 
they nearly knock themselves ofl* their legs at every turn 
of their sails, and creak in loud complaint. A weaving 
country, too ; for in the wayside cottages the loom goes 
wearily, — rattle and click, rattle and click, — and, look- 
ing in, I see the poor weaving peasant, man or tvoman, 
bending at the work, while the child, working too, turns 
a little hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its height. 
An unconscionable monster, the loom, in a small dwelling, 
asserting himself ungenerously as the bread-winner, strad- 
dling over the children's straw beds, cramping the family 
in space and air, and making himself generally objection- 
able and tyrannical. He is tributary, too, to ugly mills 
and factories and bleaching-grounds, rising out of the 
sluiced fields in an abrupt, bare way, disdaining, like him- 
self, to be ornamental or accommodating. Surrounded 
by these things, here I stood on the steps of the Hotel de 
Yille, persuaded to remain by the P. Salcy family, fifteen 
dramatic subjects strong. 

There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion be- 
ing irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the 
last Hotel, I made the tour of the little town to buy an- 
other. In the small sunny shops — mercers^ opticians\ 
and druggist-grocers’, with here and there an empo- 
rium of religious images — the gravest of old spectacled 
Flemish husbands and wives sat contemplating one an- 
other across bare counters, while the wasps, who seemed 
to have taken military possession of the town, and to 
have placed it under wasp-martial law, executed warlike 


266 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


manoeuvres in the windows. Other shops the wasps had 
entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and nobody 
came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon the board 
of custom. What I sought was no more to be found 
than if I had sought a nugget of Californian gold ; so 1 
went, spongeless, to pass the evening with the Family P. 
Salcy. 

The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and 
so like one another — fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, 
uncles, and aunts — that I think the local audience were 
much confused about the plot of the piece under repre- 
sentation, and to the last expected that everybody must 
turn out to be the long-lost relative of everybody else. 
The Theatre was established on the top story of the Hotel 
de Ville, and was approached by a long bare staircase, 
whereon, in an airy situation, one of the P. Salcy Family 
— a stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt — 
took the money. This occasioned the greatest excite- 
ment of the evening ; for no sooner did the curtain rise 
on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the person 
of the young lover (singing a very short song with his 
eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout gen- 
tleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody 
rushed out to the paying-place to ascertain whether he 
could possibly have put on that dress-coat, that clear 
complexion, and those arched black vocal eyebrows, in 
so short a space of time. It then became manifest that 
this was another stout gentleman imperfectly repressed 
by a belt ; to whom, before the spectators had recovered 
their presence of mind, entered a third stout gentleman 
imperfectly repressed by a belt, exactly like him. These 
two “ subjects,’^ making, with the money-taker, three 
of the announced fifteen, fell into conversation touching 
a charming young widow ; who, presently appearing, 
proved to be a stout lady altogether irrepressible by any 
means, — quite a parallel case to the American Negro, — 
fourth of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth, who 
presided over the check department. In good time the 
whole of the fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, 
and we had the inevitable Ma Mere, Ma Mere ! and also 
the inevitable malediction d’un pere and likewise the in- 
evitable Marquis, and also the inevitable provincial young 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


267 


mau, weak-minded but faithful, who followed Julie to 
Paris, and cried and laughed and choked all at once. 
The story was wrought out with the help of a virtuous 
Bpinning-wheel in the beginning, a vicious set of diamonds 
in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing (which arrived 
by post) from Ma Mere towards the end ; the whole re- 
sulting in a small sword in the body of one of the stout 
gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand 
francs per annum and a decoration to the other stout gen- 
tleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, and an assurance 
from everybody to the provincial young man, that, if he 
were not supremely happy, — which he seemed to have 
no reason whatever for being, — he ought to be. This 
afforded him a final opportunity of crying and laughing 
and choking all at once, and sent the audience home sen- 
timentally delighted. Audience more attentive or better 
behaved there could not possibly be, though the places 
of second rank in the Theatre of the Family P. Salcy 
were sixpence each in English money, and the places of 
first rank a shilling. How the fifteen subjects ever got 
so fat upon it, the kind Heavens know ! 

What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, 
gilded till they gleamed again, I might have bought at 
the Fair for the garniture of my home, if I had been a 
French- Flemish peasant, and had had the money I What 
shining coffee-cups and saucers I might have won at the 
turn-tables, if I had had the luck I Ravishing perfumery 
also, and sweetmeats, I might have speculated in, or I 
might have fired for prizes at a multitude of little dolls in 
niches, and might have hit the doll of dolls, and won 
francs and fame. Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I 
might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my compeers 
to tilt for municipal rewards at the water-quintain ; which, 
unless I sent my lance clean through the ring, emptied a 
full bucket over me, to fend off which, the competitors 
wore grotesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being French- 
Flemish man or woman, boy or girl, I might have circled 
all night on my hobby-horse, in a stately cavalcade of 
hobby-horses, four abreast, interspersed with triumphal 
cars, going round and round and round and round, we, 
the goodly company, singing a ceaseless chorus to the 
music of the barrel-organ, drum, and cymbals. On the 


268 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


whole, not more monotonous than the King in Hyde Park, 
London, and much merner ; for when do the circling 
company sing chorus, there, to the barrel-organ ? when do 
the ladies embrace their horses round the neck with both 
arms ? when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the tails 
of their gallant steeds ? On all these revolving delights, 
and on their own especial lamps and Chinese lanterns re- 
volving with them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens, 
and the Hdtel de Ville sheds an illuminated line of gas- 
light ; while, above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined, 
and apparently afflicted with the prevailing infirmities 
that have lighted on the poultry, is in a very undecided 
state of policy, and as a bird moulting. Flags flutter all 
around. Such is the prevailing gayety that the keeper 
of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison 
door to have a look at the world that is not locked up ; 
while that agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to 
the prison in the prison-alley (its sign La Tranquillity, be- 
cause of its charming situation), resounds with the voices 
of the shepherds and shepherdesses who resort there 
this festive night. And it reminds me that only this 
afternoon I saw a shepherd in trouble, tending this way 
over the jagged stones of a neighboring street. A mag- 
nificent sight it was to behold him in his blouse, a feeble 
little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two im- 
mense gendarmes, in cocked hats for which the street 
was hardly wide enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen 
property that would not have held his shoulder-knot, and 
clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner. 

Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, 
as a mark of my confidence in the people of this so re- 
nowned town, and as an act of homage to their good sense 
and fine taste, the Ventriloquist, the Ventriloquist I Fur- 
ther, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Face- 
Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of counte- 
nances, who transforms the features that Heaven has 
bestowed upon him into an endless succession of surpris- 
ing and extraordinary visages, comprehending. Messieurs 
et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expres- 
sive, of which the human face is capable, and all the 
passions of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, 
Hatred, Avarice, Despair I Hi, hi. Ho, ho, Lu, lu. Come 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


269 


in I To this effect, with an occasional smite upon a 
sonorous kind of tambourine, — bestowed with a will, as 
if it represented the people who won’t come in, — holds 
forth a man of lofty and severe demeanor ; a man in 
stately uniform, gloomy with the knowledge he possesses 
of the inner secrets of the booth. “ Come in, come in ! 
Your opportunity presents itself to-night ; to-morrow it 
will be gone forever. To-morrow morning by the Express 
Train the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the 
Face-Maker I Algeria will reclaim the Ventriloquist and 
the Face-Maker I Yes ! For the honor of their country 
they have accepted propositions of a magnitude incredible, 
to appear in Algeria. See them for the last time before 
their departure I We go to commence on the instant. 
Hi, hi ! Ho, ho I Lu, lu I Come in I Take the money 
that now ascends, Madame ; but, after that, no more, for 
we commence I Come in 1 ” 

Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy speaker and 
of Madame receiving sous in a muslin bower survey the 
crowd pretty sharply after the ascending money has as- 
cended, to detect any lingering sous at the turning-point. 
“ Come in, come in 1 Is there any more money, Madame, 
on the point of ascending ? If so, we wait for it. If not, 
we commence I ” The orator looks back over his shoul- 
der to say it, lashing the spectators with the conviction 
that he beholds, through the folds of the drapery into 
which he is about to plunge, the Ventriloquist and the 
Face-Maker. Several sous burst out of pockets, and as- 
cend. “ Come up, then. Messieurs I ” exclaims Madame, 
in a shrill voice, and beckoning with a bejewelled fin- 
ger. “ Come up I Time presses. Monsieur has com- 
manded that they commence 1 ” Monsieur dives into his 
Interior, and the last half-dozen of us follow. His Interior 
is comparatively severe ; his Exterior also. A true Tem- 
ple of Art needs nothing but seats, drapery, a small table 
with two moderator lamps hanging over it, and an orna- 
mental looking-glass let into the wall. Monsieur in uni- 
form gets behind the table, and surveys us with disdain, 
his forehead becoming diabolically intellectual under the 
moderators. ‘‘ Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you 
the Ventriloquist. He will commence with the celebrated 
Experience of the bee in the window. The bee, appar- 


270 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the win- 
dow, and about the room. He will be with difficulty 
caught in the hand of Monsieur the Ventriloquist, — he 
will escape, — he will again hover, — at length he will 
be recaptured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist, and will be 
with difficulty put into a bottle. Achieve then. Mon- 
sieur I Here the proprietor is replaced behind the table 
by the Ventriloquist, who is thin and sallow, and of a 
weakly aspect. While the bee is in progress. Monsieur 
the Proprietor sits apart on a stool, immersed in dark and 
remote thought. The moment the bee is bottled, he 
stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then 
announces, sternly waving his hand : The magnificent 
Experience of the child with the whooping-cough I The 
child disposed of, he starts up as before. The superb 
and extraordinary Experience of the dialogue between 
Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, and his domestic, 
Jerome, in the cellar: concluding with the songsters of 
the grove, and the Concert of domestic Farm-Yard ani- 
mals.’^ All this done, and well done. Monsieur the Ven- 
triloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts 
in, as if his retiring-room were a mile long instead of a 
yard. A corpulent little man in a large white waistcoat, 
with a comic countenance, and with a wig in his hand 
Irreverent disposition to laugh instantly checked by the 
tremendous gravity of the Face-Maker, who intimates in 
his bow that if we expect that sort of thing we are mis- 
taken. A very little shaving-glass with a leg behind it is 
handed in, and placed on the table before the Face- 
Alaker. Messieurs et Mesdanies, with no other assist- 
ance than this mirror and this wig, I shall have the honor 
of showing you a thousand characters.’^ As a prepara- 
tion the Face-Maker with both hands gouges himself, and 
turns his mouth inside out. He then becomes frightfully 
grave again, and says to the Proprietor, I am ready ! ’’ 
Proprietor stalks forth from baleful revery, and announces, 
“ The Young Conscript I ” Face-Maker claps his wig on 
hind-side before, looks in the glass, and appears above it 
as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so ex- 
tremely hard, that I should think the State would never 
get any good of him. Thunders of applause. Face- 
Maker dips behind the looking-glass, brings his own hair 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


271 


forward, is himself again, is awfully grave. A distin- 
guished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain. Face- 
Maker dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, 
toothless, slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently 
of noble birth. “The oldest member of the Corps of In- 
valides on the fete-day of his master.^^ Face-Maker dips, 
rises, wears the wig on one side, has become the feeblest 
military bore in existence, and (it is clear) would lie 
frightfully about his past achievements if he were not con- 
fined to pantomime. “ The Miser I ” Face-Maker dips, 
rises, clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end 
to express that he lives in continual dread of thieves. 
“ The Genius of France I ’’ Face-Maker dips, rises, wig 
pushed back and smoothed flat, little cocked-hat (artfully 
concealed till now) put atop of it, Face-Maker^s white 
waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker’s left hand in 
bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker’s right hand behind 
bis back. Thunders. This is the first of three positions 
of the Genius of France. In the second position, the 
Face-Maker takes snuff ; in the third, rolls up his right 
hand, and surveys illimitable armies through that pocket- 
glass. The Face-Maker then, by putting out his tongue, 
and wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the 
Village Idiot. The most remarkable feature in the whole 
of his ingenious performance is that whatever he does to 
disguise himself has the effect of rendering him rather 
more like himself than he was at first. 

There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the 
pleasure of recognizing several fields of glory with which 
I became well acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean 
battles now doing duty as Mexican victories. The 
change was neatly effected by some extra smoking of the 
Russians, and by permitting the camp followers free 
range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their uni- 
forms. As no British troops had ever happened to be 
within sight when the artist took Jiis original sketches, it 
followed fortunately that none were in the way now. 

The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting the partic- 
ular night of the week on which the ball took place, I 
decline to commit myself ; merely mentioning that it was 
held in a stable-yard so very close to the railway that it 
is a mercy the locomotive did not set fire to it. (In 


272 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Scotland, I suppose it would have done so.) There, in a 
tent prettily decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad 
of toy flags, the people danced all night. It was not an 
expensive recreation, the price of a double ticket for a cav- 
alier and lady being one and threepence in English money 
and even of that small sum fivepence was reclaimable, 
for consommation ; which word I venture to translate 
into refreshments of no greater strength, at the strongest, 
than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in it. 
It was a ball of great good-humor and of great enjoyment, 
though very many of the dancers must have been as poor 
as the fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family. 

In short, not having taken my own pet national pint- 
pot with me to this Fair, I was very well satisfied with 
the measure of simple enjoyment that it poured into the 
dull French-Flemish country life. How dull that is, I had 
an opportunity of considering when the Fair was ovei ; 
when the tri-colored flags were withdrawn from the win- 
dows of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held ; 
when the windows were close shut, apparently until next 
Fair-time ; when the Hotel de Ville had cut off its gas and 
put away its eagle ; when the two paviors, whom I take 
to form the entire paving population of the town, were 
ramming down the stones which had been pulled up for 
the erection of decorative poles ; when the jailer had 
slammed his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his 
charges. But then as I paced the ring which marked the 
track of the departed hobby-horses on the market-place, 
pondering in my mind how long some hobby-horses do 
leave their tracks in public ways, and how diflScult they 
are to erase, my eyes were greeted with a goodly sight. 
I beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing the 
Place together in the sunlight, evidently not belonging to 
the town, and having upon them a certain loose cosmopol- 
itan air of not belonging to any town. One was clad in 
a suit of white canvas, another in a cap and blouse, the 
third in an old military frock, the fourth in a shapeless 
dress, that looked as if it had been made out of old um- 
brellas. All wore dust-colored shoes. My heart beat 
high ; for in those four male personages, although com- 
plexionless and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the 
Family P. Salcy. Blue-bearded though they were, and 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 2^^ 

bereft of the youthful smoothness of cheek which is im- 
parted by what is termed in Albion a ‘‘ A^^itechapel 
shave (and which is, in fact, whitening judiciously ap- 
plied to the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognized 
them. As I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard 
of a lowly Cabaret the excellent Ma Mere, Ma Mere, with 
the w’ords, ‘‘The soup is served,’^ — words which so 
elated the subject in the canvas suit, that, when they all 
ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with his hands 
stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, 
after the Pierrot manner. Glancing down the Yard, the 
last I saw of him was that he looked in through a window 
(at the soup, no doubt) on one leg. 

Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from 
the town, little dreaming of an addition to my good for- 
tune. But more was in reserve. I went by a train which 
was heavy with third-class carriages full of young fellows 
(well guarded) who had drawn unlucky numbers in the 
last conscription, and were on their way to a famous 
French garrison town where much of the raw military ma- 
terial is worked up into soldiery. At the station they had 
been sitting about in their threadbare, homespun blue gar- 
ments, with their poor little bundles under their arms, 
covered with dust and clay, and the various soils of 
France ; sad enough at heart, most of them, but putting 
a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts and sing- 
ing choruses on the smallest provocation, the gayer spirits 
shouldering half-loaves of black bread speared upon their 
walking-sticks. As we went along, they were audible at 
every station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning 
the highest hilarity. After a while, however, they begau 
to leave off singing, and to laugh naturally, while at inter- 
vals there mingled with their laughter the barking of a 
dog. Now, I had to alight short of their destination, and 
as that stoppage of the train was attended with a quantity 
of horn-blowing, bell-ringing, and proclamation of what 
Messieurs les Yoyageurs were to do, and were not to do, 
in order to reach their respective destinations, I had ample 
leisure to go forward on the platform to take a parting 
look at my recruits, whose heads were all out at window, 
and who were laughing like delighted children. Then I 
perceived tliat a large poodle with a pink nose, who had 
18 


274 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


been their travelling companion and the cause of their 
mirth, stood on his hind legs presenting arms on the ex- 
treme verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the 
train went off. This poodle wore a military shako (it is 
unnecessary to add very much on one side, over one eye), 
a little military coat, and the regulation white gaiters, 
lie was armed with a little musket and a little sword-bay- 
onet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect attitude, 
with his unobscured eye on his master or superior officer, 
who stood by him. So admirable was his discipline, that, 
when the train moved, and he was greeted with the 
parting cheers of the recruits, and also with a shower of 
centimes, several of which struck his shako and had a 
tendency to discompose him, he remained stanch on his 
post until the train was gone. He then resigned his arms 
to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over 
it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into 
the absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and 
ran about the platform in his white gaiters, wagging his 
tail to an exceeding great extent. It struck me that there 
was more waggery than this in the poodle, and that he 
knew that the recruits would neither get through their ex- 
ercises nor get rid of their uniforms as easily as he ; re- 
volving which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets 
some small money to bestow upon him, I casually directed 
my eyes to the face of his superior officer, and in him be- 
held the Face-Maker 1 Though it was not the way to Al- 
geria, but quite the reverse, the military poodle’s Colonel 
was the Face-Maker, in a dark blouse, with a small bun- 
dle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, 
and taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the 
poodle went their mysterious way. 


THL UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


<575 


XXYI. 


MEDICINE-MEN OF CIVILIZATION. 

My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often 
yield me matter for reflection at home. It is curious to 
trace the savage in the civilized man, and to detect the 
hold of some savage customs on conditions of society 
rather boastful of being high above them. 

I wonder, is the Medicine-Man of the North American 
Indians never to be got rid of, out of the North American 
country ? He comes into my Wigwam on all manner of 
occasions, and with the absurdest ‘‘ Medicine.’^ I always 
find it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply im- 
possible, to keep him out of my Wigwam. For his legal 
“ Medicine he sticks upon his head the hair of quadru- 
peds, and plasters the same with fat, and dirty-white 
powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown to the men 
and squaws of his tribe. For his religious ‘‘ Medicine ’’ 
he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black aprons, large 
black waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless coats, with 
Medicine button-holes. Medicine stockings and gaiters and 
shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medi- 
cinal hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free 
from him. On occasions when the Medicine-Men in gen- 
eral, together with a large number of the miscellaneous 
inhabitants of his village, both male and female,' are pre- 
sented to the principal Chief, his native “ Medicine ^Ms a 
comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of traders), 
and new things in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red 
cloth (of which he is particularly fond), and white and 
red and blue paint for the face. The irrationality of this 
particular Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, 
from which many of the squaws are borne out much dilap- 
idated. I need not observe how unlike this is to a 
Drawing-Room at St. James’s Palace. 


276 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


The African magician I find it very diflScult to exclude 
from my Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of 
death and mourning under his supervision, and will fre- 
quently impoverish a whole family by his preposterous 
enchantments. He is a great eater and drinker, and al- 
ways conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exte- 
rior. His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worth- 
less scraps, for which he charges very high. He impresses 
on the poor bereaved natives, that the more of his fol- 
lowers they pay to exhibit such scraps on their persons 
for an hour or two (though they never saw the deceased 
in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his decease), 
the more honorably and piously they grieve for the dead. 
The poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, 
an expressive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, 
feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning ob- 
jects besmeared with black paint, are carried in a certain 
ghastly order of which no one understands the meaning, 
if it ever had any, to the brink of the grave, and are then 
brought back again. 

In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a 
soul, so that, when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they 
say, " His immortal part has departed ; he is gone to the 
happy hunting-plains.^^ This belief leads to the logical 
sequence that, when a man is buried, some of his eating 
and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements, 
must be broken, and buried with him. Superstitious and 
wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition than 
the hire of antic scraps for a show that has no meaning 
based on any sincere belief. 

Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a pass- 
ing glance on some funeral solemnities that I have seen 
where North American Indians, African Magicians, and 
Tonga-Islanders are supposed not to be. 

Once I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with 
me for a while an Englishman of an amiable nature, great 
enthusiasm, and no discretion. This friend discovered a 
desolate stranger mourning over the unexpected death of 
one very dear to him, in a solitary cottage among the 
vineyards of an outlying village. The circumstances of 
the bereavement were unusually distressing ; and the sur- 
vivor, now to the peasants and the country, sorely needed 


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help, being alone with the remains. With some difficulty, 
but with the strong influence of a purpose at once gentle, 
disinterested, and determined, my friend — Mr. Kindheart 
— obtained access to the mourner, and undertook to ar- 
range the burial. 

There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city 
walls, and as Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned 
into it, and chose the spot. He was always highly flushed 
when rendering a service unaided, and I knew that to 
make him happy I must keep aloof from his ministration. 
But when at dinner he warmed with the good action of 
the day, and conceived the brilliant idea of comforting 
the mourner with ‘‘ an English funeral, I ventured to 
intimate that I thought that institution, which was not 
absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure in Ital- 
ian hands. However, Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured 
with his conception, that he presently wrote down into 
the town requesting the attendance, with to-morrow^s 
earliest light, of a certain little upholsterer. This uphol- 
sterer was famous for speaking the unintelligible local 
dialect (his own) in a far more unintelligible manner than 
any other man alive. 

When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. 
Kindheart and the upholsterer in conference on the top 
of an echoing staircase ; and when I overheard Mr. Kind- 
heart rendering English Undertaking phrases into very 
choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the un- 
known Tongues ; and when I furthermore remembered 
that the local funerals had no resemblance to English fu- 
nerals, — I became in my secret bosom apprehensive. 
But Mr. Kindheart informed me at breakfast that meas- 
ures had been taken to insure a signal success. 

As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I 
knew to which of the city gates it must tend, I went out 
at that gate as the sun descended, and walked along the 
dusty, dusty road. I had not walked far when I encoun- 
tered this procession : — 

1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense gray 
horse! 

2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coach- 
man in bright red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat. 
(This was the established local idea of State.) Both 


278 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


coach doors kept open by the coJBSn, which was on its 
side within, and sticking out at each. 

3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach 
was intended, walking in the dust. 

4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation 
of a garden, the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring. 

It matters little now. Coaches of all colors are alike 
to poor Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little 
cemetery with the cypress-trees, by the city walls where 
the Mediterranean is so beautiful. 

My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its 
kind, was that of the husband of a married servant, once 
my nurse. She married for money. Sally Flanders, af- 
ter a year or two of matrimony, became the relict of Flan- 
ders, a small master-builder ; and either she or Flanders 
had done me the honor to express a desire that I should 

follow.” I may have been seven or eight years old, — 
young enough, certainly, to feel rather alarmed by the 
expression, as not knowing where the invitation was held 
to terminate, and how far I was expected to follow the 
deceased Flanders. Consent being given by the heads 
of houses, I was jobbed up into what was pronounced at 
home decent mourning (comprehending somebody else’s 
shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was admon- 
ished that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my 
hands in my pockets, or took my eyes out of my pock- 
et-handkerchief, I was personally lost, and my family 
disgraced. On the eventful day, having tried to get 
myself into a disastrous frame of mind, and having formed 
a very poor opinion of myself because I could n^t cry 
T repaired to Sally^s. Sally was an excellent creature, 
and had been a good wife to old Flanders ; but the mo- 
ment I saw her I knew that she was not in her own 
real natural state. She formed a sort of Coat of Arms, 
grouped with a smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an orange, 
a bottle of vinegar, Flanders’s sister, her own sister, 
Flanders’s brother’s wife, and two neighboring gossips, 
— all in mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever 
she fainted. At sight of poor little me she became much 
agitated (agitating me much more), and having exclaimed, 
“ 0, here’s dear Master Uncommercial I ” became hyster- 
ical, and swooned as if I had been the death of her. An 


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279 


affecting scene followed, during which I was handed 
about and poked at her by various people, as if I were 
the bottle of salts. Keviving a little, she embraced me, 
said : '‘You knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial, 
and he knew you ! and fainted again, which, as the rest 
of the Coat of Arms soothingly said, " done her credit.^’ 
Now I knew that she needn’t have fainted unless she 
liked, and that she would n’t have fainted unless it had 
been expected of her, quite as well as I know it at this 
day. It made me feel uncomfortable and hypocritical 
besides. I was not sure but that it might be manners in 
me to faint next ; and I resolved to keep my eye on Flan- 
ders’s uncle, and if I saw any signs of his going in that 
direction, to go too, politely. But Flanders’s uncle (who 
was a weak little old retail grocer) had only one idea, 
which was that we all wanted tea ; and he handed us 
cups of tea all round incessantly, whether we refused or 
not. There was a young nephew of Flanders’s present, 
to whom Flanders, it was rumored, had left nineteen 
guineas. He drank all the tea that was offered him, this 
nephew, — amounting, I should say, to several quarts, — 
and ate as much plum-cake as he could possibly come 
by ; but he felt it to be decent mourning that he should 
now and then stop in the midst of a lump of cake, and 
appear to forget that his mouth was full, in the contem- 
plation of his uncle’s memory. I felt all this to be the 
fault of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on a 
tea-tray, as if they were muflSns, and tying us into cloaks 
(mine had to be pinned up all round, it was so long for 
me), because I knew that he was making game. So 
when we got out into the streets, and I constantly disar- 
ranged the procession by tumbling on the people before 
me because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and trip- 
ping up the people behind me because my cloak was so 
long, I felt that we were all making game. I was truly 
sorry for Flanders, but I knew that was no reason why 
we should be trying (the women with their heads in hoods 
like coal-scuttles with the black side outward) to keep 
step with a man in a scarf, carrying a thing like a mourn- 
ing spy-glass which he was going to open presently and 
sweep the horizon with. I knew that we should not all 
have been speaking in one particular key-note struck by 


280 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


the undertaker, if we had not been making game. Even 
in our faces we were every one of us as like the under- 
taker as if we had been his own family, and I perceived 
that this could not have happened unless we had been 
making game. When we returned to Sally^s, it was all 
of a piece. The continued impossibility of getting on 
without plum-cake ; the ceremonious apparition of a pair 
of decanters containing port and sherry and cork ; Sally’s 
sister at the tea-table, clinking the best crockery, and 
shaking her head mournfully every time she looked down 
into the teapot, as if it were the tomb ; the Coat of Arms 
again, and Sally as before ; lastly, the words of consola- 
tion administered to Sally when it was considered righ'^ 
that she should '‘come round nicely” ; which were tha> 
the deceased had had " as com-for-ta-ble a fu-ne-ral ae 
comfortable could be I ” 

Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since 
that day, of which the burden has been the same childish 
burden. Making game. Real affliction, real grief and 
solemnity, have been outraged, and the funeral has been 
" performed.” The waste for which the funeral customs 
of many tribes of savages are conspicuous has attended 
these civilized obsequies ; and once, and twice, have I 
wished in my soul that, if the waste must be, they would 
let the undertaker bury the money, and let me bury the 
friend. 

In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more 
sensibly regulated, because they are upon the whole less 
expensively regulated. I cannot say that I have ever 
been much edified by the custom of tying a bib and apron 
on the front of the house of mourning, or that I would my- 
self particularly care to be driven to my grave in a nod- 
ding and bobbing car, like an infirm four-post bedstead, 
by an inky fellow-creature in a cocked hat. But it may 
be that I am constitutionally insensible to the virtues of 
a cocked hat. In provincial France the solemnities are 
sufficiently hideous, but are few and cheap. The friends 
and townsmen of the departed, in their own dresses and 
not masquerading under the auspices of the African Con- 
jurer, surround the hand-bier, and often carry it. It is not 
considered indispensable to stifle the bearers, or even to 
elevate the burden on their shoulders ; consequently it is 


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281 


easily taken up, and easily set down, and is carried 
through the streets without the distressing floundering 
and shuffling that we see at home. A dirty priest or two, 
and a dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial 
grace to the proceedings ; and I regard with personal 
animosity the bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the 
big-legged priest (it is always a big-legged priest who 
blows the bassoon), when his fellows combine in a lugu- 
brious stalwart drawl. But there is far less of the 
Conjurer and the Medicine-Man in the business than under 
like circumstances here. The grim coaches that we re- 
serve expressly for such shows are non-existent ; if the 
cemetery be far out of the town, the coaches that are 
hired for other purposes of life are hired for this purpose ; 
and although the honest vehicles make no pretence of be- 
ing overcome, I have never noticed that the people in 
them were the worse for it. In Italy the hooded Mem- 
bers of Confraternities who attend on funerals are dismal 
and ugly to look upon ; but the services they render are 
at least voluntarily rendered, and impoverish no one, and 
cost nothing. Why should high civilization and low sav- 
agery ever come together on the point of making them a 
wantonly wasteful and contemptible set of forms ? 

Once I lost a friend by death who had been troubled in 
his time by the Medicine-Man and the Conjurer, and upon 
whose limited resources there were abundant claims. 
The Conjurer assured me that I must positively ‘‘follow,’^ 
and both he and the Medicine-Man entertained no doubt 
that I must go in a black carriage, and must wear fit- 
tings.’^ I objected to fittings as having nothing to do 
with my friendship, and I objected to the black carriage 
as being in more senses than one a job. So it came into 
my mind to try what would happen if I quietly walked in 
my own way from my own house to my friend’s burial- 
place, and stood beside his open grave in my own dress 
and person, reverently listening to the best of Services. 
It satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I had 
been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf, both trailing 
to my very heels, and as if I had cost the orphan chil- 
dren, in their greatest need, ten guineas. 

Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdi- 
ties attendant on "'A message from the Lords,” in the 


282 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


House of Commons, turn upon the Medicine-Man of the 
poor Indians ? Has he any “ Medicine in that dried- 
skin pouch of his so supremely ludicrous as the two Mas- 
ters in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and 
butting their ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker ? Yet there 
are authorities innumerable to tell me — as there are au- 
thorities innumerable among the Indians to tell them — 
that the nonsense is indispensable, and that its abrogation 
would involve most awful consequences. What would 
any rational creature who had never heard of judicial and 
forensic fittings think of the Court of Common Pleas 
on the first day of Term ? Or with what an awakened 
sense of humor would Livingstone^s account of a similar 
scene be perused, if the fur and red cloth and goats^ hair 
and horse-hair and powdered chalk, and black patches on 
the top of the head, were all at Tala Mungongo instead 
of Westminster ? That model missionary and good 
brave man found at least one tribe of blacks with a very 
strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch that, although an 
amiable and docile people, they never could see the Mis- 
sionaries dispose of their legs in the attitude of kneeling, 
or hear them begin a hymn in chorus, without bursting 
into roars of irrepressible laughter. It is much to be 
hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever 
find his way to England, and get committed for contempt 
of Court. 

In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set 
of personages called Mataboos, — or some such name, — 
who are the Masters of all the public ceremonies, and 
who know the exact place in which every chief must sit 
down when a solemn public meeting takes place, — a 
meeting which bears a family resemblance to our own 
Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main part of the 
proceedings that every gentleman present is required to 
drink something nasty. These Mataboos are a privileged 
order, so important is their avocation, and they make the 
most of their high functions. A long way out of the 
Tonga Islands — indeed, rather near the British Islands 
— was there no calling in of the Mataboos the other day 
to settle an earth-convulsing question of precedence ? and 
was there no weighty opinion delivered on the part of 
the Mataboos, which, being interpreted to that unlucky 


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283 


tribe of blacks with the sense of the ridiculous, would in- 
fallibly set the whole population screaming with laughter ? 

My sense of justice demands the admission, however, 
that this is not quite a one-sided question. If we submit 
ourselves meekly to the Medicine-Man and the Conjurer, 
and are not exalted by it, the savages may retort upon 
us that we act more unwisely than they in other matters 
wherein we fail to imitate them. It is a widely diffused 
custom among savage tribes, when they meet to discuss 
any affair of public importance, to sit up all night making 
a horrible noise, dancing, blowing shells, and (in cases 
where they are familiar with fire-arms) fiying out into 
open places and letting oft' guns. It is questionable 
whether our legislative assemblies might not take a hint 
from this. A shell is not a melodious wind-instrument, 
and it is monotonous ; but it is as musical as, and not 
more monotonous than, my Honorable friend^s own trum- 
pet, or the trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister. 
The uselessness of arguing with any supporter of a Gov- 
ernment or of an Opposition is well known. Try dancing. 
It is a better exercise, and has the unspeakable recom- 
mendation that it could n’t be reported. The honorable 
and savage member who has a loaded gun, and has grown 
impatient of debate, plunges out of doors, fires in the air, 
and returns calm and silent to the Palaver. Let the hon- 
orable and civilized member similarly charged with a 
speech dart into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in 
the silence of night, let his speech ofi‘, and come back 
harmless. It is not at first sight a very rational custom 
to paint a broad blue stripe across one’s nose and both 
cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the 
chin, to attach a few pounds of wood to one’s under lip, 
to stick fish-bones in one’s ears and a brass curtain-ring 
in one’s nose, and to rub one’s body all over with rancid 
oil, as a preliminary to entering on business. But this is 
a question of taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor 
Uniform. The manner of entering on the business itself 
is another question. A council of six hundred savage 
gentlemen entirely independent of tailors, sitting on their 
hams in a ring, smoking, and occasionally grunting, seem 
to me, according to the experience I have gathered in my 
voyages and travels, somehow to do what they come to- 


284 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


gether for ; whereas that is not at all the general expe- 
rience of a council of six hundred civilized gentlemen very 
dependent on tailors, and sitting on mechanical contri- 
vances. It is better that an Assembly should do its 
utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should di- 
rect its endeavors to enveloping the public in smoke ; and 
I would rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than 
buried one subject demanding attention. 


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285 


XXYII. 


TITBULL’S ALMSHOUSES. 

By the side of most railways, out of London, one may 
see Almshouses and Retreats (generally with a Wing or 
a Centre wanting, and ambitious of being much bigger 
than they are), some of which are newly founded Institu- 
tions, and some old establishments transplanted. There 
is a tendency in these pieces of architecture to shoot up- 
ward unexpectedly, like Jack’s bean-stalk, and to be 
ornate in spires of Chapels and lanterns of Halls, whicli 
might lead to the embellishment of the air with many cas- 
tles of questionable beauty, but for the restraining con- 
sideration of expense. However, the managers, being 
always of a sanguine temperament, comfort themselves 
with plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and 
are influenced in the present by philanthropy towards the 
railway passengers. For the question how prosperous 
and promising the buildings can be made to look in their 
eyes usually supersedes the lesser question how they can 
be turned to the best account for the inmates. 

Why none of the people who reside in these places 
ever look out of window, or take an airing in the piece of 
ground which is going to be a garden by and by, is one 
of the wonders I have added to my always lengthening 
list of the wonders of the world. I have got it into my 
mind that they live in a state of chronic injury and re- 
sentment, and on that account refuse to decorate the 
building with a human interest. As I have known lega- 
tees deeply injured by a bequest of five hundred pounds 
because it was not five thousand ; and as I was once 
acquainted with a pensioner on the Public to the extent 
of two hundred a year, who perpetually anathematized his 
Country because he was not in the receipt of four, having 
no claim whatever to sixpence ; so perhaps it usually 


286 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


happens, within certain limits, that to get a little help is 
to get a notion of being defrauded of more. ‘‘ How do 
they pass their lives in this beautiful and peaceful place ? 
was the subject of my speculation with a visitor who 
once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat for old 
men and women, — a quaint, ancient foundation in a pleas- 
ant English county, behind a picturesque church and 
among rich old convent gardens. There were but some 
dozen or so of houses, and we agreed that we would talk 
with the inhabitants, as they sat in their groined rooms 
between the light of their fires and the light shining in at 
their latticed windows, and would find out. They passed 
their lives in considering themselves mulcted of certain 
ounces of tea by a deaf old steward, who lived among 
them in the quadrangle. There was no reason to suppose 
that any such ounces of tea had ever been in existence, 
or that the old steward so much as knew what was the 
matter ; he passed his life in considering himself periodi- 
cally defrauded of a birch-broom by the beadle. 

But it is neither to old Almshouses in the country, nor 
to new Almshouses by the railroad, that these present 
Uncommercial notes relate. They refer back to journeys 
made among those commonplace smoky-fronted London 
Almshouses, with a little paved court-yard in front enclosed 
by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it were, 
by bricks and mortar, which were once in a suburb, but 
are now in the densely populated town, — gaps in the 
busy life around them, parentheses in the close and blot- 
ted texts of the streets. 

Sometimes these Almshouses belong to a Company or 
Society. Sometimes they were established by individuals, 
and are maintained out of private funds, bequeathed in per- 
petuity long ago. My favorite among them is TitbulPs, 
which establishment is a picture of many. Of Titbull 
I know no more than that he deceased in 1*7 23, that his 
Christian name was Sampson, and his social designation 
Esquire ; and that he founded these Almshouses as Dwell- 
ings for Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men by his Will 
and Testament. I should not know even this much but 
for its being inscribed on a grim stone, very difficult to 
read, let into the front of the centre house of TitbulBs 
Almshouses, and which stone is ornamented atop with a 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


287 


piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of Tit- 
bull’s bath-towel. 

Titbull’s Almshouses are in the east of London, in a 
great highway, in a poor, busy, and thronged neighbor- 
hood. Old iron and fried fish, cough-drops and artificial 
flowers, boiled pigs’-feet, and household furniture that 
looks as if it were polished up with lip-salve, umbrellas 
full of vocal literature, and saucers full of shell-fish in a 
green juice which 1 liope is natural to them when their 
health is good, garnish the paved sideways as you go to 
Titbull’s. 1 take the ground to have risen in those parts 
since Titbull’s time, and you drop into his domain by 
three stone steps. So did I first drop into it, very nearly 
striking my brows against Titb nil’s pump, wliich stands 
with its back to the thoroughfare just inside the gate, 
and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull’s pensioners. 

“ And a worse one,” said a virulent old man with a 
pitcher, “ there is n’t nowhere. A harder one to work, 
nor a grudgin’er one to yield, there is n’t nowhere I ” 
This old man wore a long coat, such as we see Hogarth’s 
Chairmen represented with, and it was of that peculiar 
green-pea hue, without the green, which seems to come 
of poverty. It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard 
which seems to come of poverty. 

The pump is rusty, perhaps,” said I. 

“Not said the old man, regarding it with undiluted 
virulence in his watery eye. “ It never were fit to be 
termed a pump. That ’s what ’s the matter with 

“ Whose fault is that ? ” said I. 

The old man, who had a working mouth, which seemed 
to be trying to masticate his anger, and to find that it 
was too hard, and there was too much of it, replied, 
“ Them gentlemen.” 

“ What gentlemen ? ” 

“ Maybe you ’re one of ’em ? ” said the old man, sus- 
piciously. 

“ The trustees ? ” 

“I wouldn’t trust ’em myself,” said the virulent old 
man. 

“ If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, 
no, I am not one of them, nor have I ever so much as 
heard of them.” 


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THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


“ I wish I never heard of them/^ gasped the old man ; 

at my time of life — with the rheumatics — drawing 
water — from that thing I Not to be deluded into call- 
ing it a Pump, the old man gave it another virulent look, 
took up his pitcher, and carried it into a corner dwelling- 
house, shutting the door after him. 

Looking around and seeing that each little house was 
a house of two little rooms ; and seeing that the little 
oblong court-yard in front was like a graveyard for the 
inhabitants, saving that no word was engraven on its flat, 
dry stones ; and seeing that the currents of life and noise 
ran to and fro outside, having no more to do with the 
place than if it were a sort of low-water mark on a lively 
beach, — I say, seeing this and nothing else, I was going 
out at the gate when one of the doors opened. 

‘‘ Was you looking for anything, sir ? asked a tidy, 
well-favored woman. 

Eeally, no ; I could n^t say I was. 

“Not wanting any one, sir ? 

“No — at least I — pray what is the name of the el- 
derly gentleman who lives in the corner there ? 

The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I 
indicated, and she and the pump and I stood all three in 
a row, with our backs to the thoroughfare. 

“ Oh I His name is Mr. Battens, said the tidy wo- 
man, dropping her voice. 

“ I have just been talking with him.^^ 

“ Indeed ? said the tidy woman. “ Ho I I wonder 
Mr. Battens talked I 

“ Is he usually so silent ? 

“Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here — that is to say, 
the oldest of the old gentlemen — in point of residence. 

She had a way of passing her hands over and under 
one another, as she spoke, that was not only tidy but 
propitiatory ; so I asked her if I might look at her little 
sitting-room. She willingly replied. Yes, and we went 
into it together ; she leaving the door open, with an eye, 
as I understood, to the social proprieties. The door 
opening at once into the room, without any intervening 
entry, even scandal must have been silenced by the pre- 
caution. 

It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


289 


mug of wall-flower in the window. On the chimney-piece 
were two peacock’s feathers, a carved ship, a few shells, 
and a black profile with one eyelash ; whether this por- 
trait purported to be male or female passed my compre- 
hension, until my hostess informed me that it was her 
only son, and “ quite a speaking one.” 

“ He is alive, I hope ? ” 

“ No sir,” said the widow ; he were cast away in 
China.” This was said with a modest sense of its re- 
flecting a certain geographical distinction on his mother. 

If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,” 
said I, ‘‘I hope the old ladies are? — not that you are 
one.” 

She shook her head. You see they get so cross.” 

“ How is that ? ” 

“ Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of 
any little matters which ought to be ours by rights I can- 
not say for certain ; but the opinion of the old ones is 
they do. And Mr. Battens, he do even go so far as to 
doubt whether credit is due to the Founder. For Mr. 
Battens, he do say, anyhow he got his name up by it, 
and he done it cheap.” 

“ I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.” 

It may be so,” returned the tidy widow, “but the 
handle does go very hard. Still, what I say to myself is, 
the gentlemen may not pocket the difference between a 
good pump and a bad one, and I would wish to think 
well of them. And the dwellings,” said my hostess, 
glancing round her room, — “ perhaps they were conven- 
ient dwellings in the Founder’s time considered as his 
time, and therefore he should not be blamed. But Mrs. 
Saggers is very hard upon them.” 

“ Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here ? ” 

“ The oldest but one. Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, 
and have totally lost her head.” 

“ And you ? ” 

“ I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am 
not looked up to. But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy 
release, there will be one below me. Nor is it to be ex- 
pected that Mrs. Saggers will prove herself immortal.” 

“ True. Nor Mr. Battens.” 

“ Regarding the old gentlemen,” said my widow, 
19 


290 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Blightiiigly, “ they count among themselves. They do 
not count among us. Mr. Battens is that exceptional 
that he hav^e written to the gentlemen many times, and 
have worked the case against them. Therefore he have 
took a higher ground. But we do not, as a rule, greatly 
reckon the old gentlemen. 

Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally set- 
tled among the poor ladies, that the poor gentlemen, 
whatever their ages, were all very old indeed, and in a 
state of dotage. I also discovered that the juniors and 
new-comers preserved for a time a waning disposition to 
believe in Titbull and his trustees, but that as they gained 
social standing they lost this faith, and disparaged Tit- 
bull and all his works. 

Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this re- 
spected lady, whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasion- 
ally dropping in upon her with a little offering of sound 
Family Hyson in my pocket, I gradually became familiar 
with the inner politics and ways of TitbulPs Almshouses. 
But I never could find out who the trustees were, or 
where they were ; it being one of the fixed ideas of the 
place that those authorities must be vaguely and myste- 
riously mentioned as ‘‘the gentlemen only. The secre- 
tary of “ the gentlemen ” was once pointed out to me, 
evidently engaged in championing the obnoxious pump 
against the attacks of the discontented Mr. Battens ; but 
I am not in a condition to report further of him than that 
he had the sprightly bearing of a lawyer's clerk. I had 
it from Mrs. Mitts's lips, in a very confidential moment, 
that Mr. Battens was once “ had up before the gentle- 
men " to stand or fall by his accusations, and that an old 
shoe was thrown after him on his departure from the 
building on this dread errand, — not ineffectually, for the 
interview, resulting in a plumber, was considered to have 
encircled the temples of Mr. Battens with the wreath of 
victory. 

In Titbull's Almshouses, the local society is not regard- 
ed as good society. A gentleman or lady receiving vis- 
itors from without, or going out to tea, counts, as it were, 
accordingly ; but visitings or tea-drinkings interchanged 
among Titbullians do not score. Such interchanges, how- 
ever, are rare, in consequence of internal dissensions oo 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


291 


casioned by Mrs. Saggers^s pail, which household article 
has split TitbulPs into almost as many parties as there are 
dwellings in that precinct. The extremely complicated 
nature of the conflicting articles of belief on the subject 
prevents my stating them here with my usual perspicuity ; 
but I think they have all branched off from the root-and- 
trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her 
pail outside her dwelling ? The question has been much 
refined upon, but, roughly stated, may be stated in those 
terms. 

There are two old men in TitbulPs Almshouses who, I 
have been given to understand, knew each other in the 
world beyond its pump and iron railings when they were 
both ^'in trade. They make the best of their reverses, 
and are looked upon with great contempt. They are little, 
stooping, blear-eyed old men of cheerful countenance, and 
they hobble up and down the court-yard wagging their 
chins, and talking together quite gayly. This has given 
offence, and has, moreover, raised the question whether 
they are justified in passing any other windows than their 
own. Mr. Battens, however, permitting them to pass his 
windows on the disdainful ground that their imbecility al- 
most amounts to irresponsibility, they are allowed to take 
their walk in peace. They live next door to one another, 
and take it by turns to read the newspaper aloud (that is 
to say, the newest newspaper they can get), and they play 
cribbage at night. On warm and sunny days they have 
been known to go so far as to bring out two chairs, and 
sit by the iron railings, looking forth ; but this low con- 
duct being much remarked upon throughout TitbulPs, they 
were deterred by an outraged public opinion from repeat- 
ing it. There is a rumor — but it may be malicious — 
that they hold the memory of Titbull in some weak sort 
of veneration, and that they once set off together on a 
pilgrimage to the parish churchyard to find his tomb. To 
this, perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion that 
they are spies of the gentlemen \ to which they were 
supposed to have given color in my own presence on the 
occasion of the weak attempt at justification of the pump 
Dy the gentlemen^s clerk, when they emerged bareheaded 
from the doors of their dwellings, as if their dwellings and 
themselves constituted an old-fashioned weather-glass of 


302 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 


understand that he was wiser now than he had been for- 
merly, and that no more money was extractable from his 
pocket. 

He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from 
the post-office, and was accustomed to walk into the city 
with his letters, and post them himself. On a lovely 
spring day, when the sky was exquisitely blue, and the 
sea divinely beautiful, he took his usual walk, cair^dng 
this letter to the Advocate in his pocket. As he went 
along, his gentle heart was much moved by the loveliness 
of the prospect, and by the thought of the slowly dying 
prisoner chained to the bedstead, for whom the universe 
had no delights. As he drew nearer and nearer to the 
city where he was to post the letter, he became very un- 
easy in his mind. He debated with himself, was it re- 
motely possible, after all, that this sum of fifty pounds 
could restore the fellow-creature whom he pitied so much, 
and for whom he had striven so hard, to liberty ? He 
was not a conventionally rich Englishman, — very far 
from that, — but he had a spare fiftj'’ pounds at the bank- 
er's. He resolved to risk it. Without doubt, God has 
recompensed him for the resolution. 

He went to the banker’s, and got a bill for the amount, 
and enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I 
could have seen. He simply told the Advocate that he 
was quite a poor man, and that he was sensible it might 
be a great weakness in him to part with so much money 
on the faith of so vague a communication ; but that there 
it was, and that he prayed the Advocate to make a good 
use of it. If he did otherwise, no good could ever come 
of it, and it would lie heavy on his soul one day. 

Within a week the Englishman was sitting at his 
breakfast, when he heard some suppressed sounds of agi- 
tation on the staircase, and Giovanni Carlavero leaped 
into the room, and fell upon his breast, a free man ! 

Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own 
thoughts, the Englishman wrote him an earnest and grate- 
ful letter, avowing the fact, and entreating him to confide 
by what means and through what agency he had suc- 
ceeded so well. The Advocate returned for answer 
through the post : There are many things, as you 
know, in this Italy of ours, that arc safest and best not 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


803 


even spoken of, — far less written of. We may meet 
some day, and then I may tell you what you want to 
know ; not here and now.^’ But the two never did meet 
again. The Advocate was dead when the Englishman 
gave me my trust ; and how the man had been set free 
remained as great a mystery to the Englishman, and to 
the man himself, as it was to me. 

But I knew this : — here was the man, this sultry night, 
on his knees at my feet, because I was the Englishman's 
friend ; here were his tears upon my dress ; here were 
his sobs choking his utterance ; here were his kisses on 
my hands, because they had touched the hands that had 
worked out his release. He had no need to tell me it 
would be happiness to him to die for his benefactor ; I 
doubt if I ever saw real, sterling, fervent gratitude of 
soul before or since. 

He was much watched and suspected, he said, and 
had had enough to do to keep himself out of trouble. 
This, and his not having prospered in his worldly affairs, 
had led to his having failed in his usual communications 
to the Englishman for — as I now remember the period — > 
some two or three years. But his prospects were bright- 
er, and his wife, who had been very ill, had recovered, 
and his fever had left him, and he had bought a little 
vineyard, and would I carry to his benefactor the first of 
its wine ? Ay, that I would (I told him with enthusiasm), 
and not a drop of it should be spilled or lost I 

He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of 
himself, and had talked with such excess of emotion, and 
in a provincial Italian so difficult to understand, that I 
had more than once been obliged to stop him, and beg 
him to have compassion on me, and be slower and calmer. 
By degrees he became so, and tranquilly walked back 
with me to the hotel. There I sat down before I went 
to bed, and wrote a faithful account of him to the Eng- 
lishman ; which I concluded by saying that I would 
bring the wine home, against any difficulties, every drop. 

Early next morning, when I came out at the hotel door 
to pursue my journey, I found my friend waiting with 
one of those immense bottles in which the Italian peas- 
ants store their wine, — a bottle holding some half-dozen 
gallons, bound round with basket-work for greater safety 


304 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


on the journey. I see him now, in the bright sunlight, 
tears of gratitude in his eyes, proudly inviting my atten- 
tion to this corpulent bottle. (At the street corner hard 
by, two high-flavored, able-bodied monks, — pretending 
to talk together, but keeping their four evil eyes upon 
us.) 

How the bottle had been got there did not appear ; 
but the difficulty of getting it into the ramshackle vet- 
turino carriage in which I was departing was so great, 
and it took up so much room when it was got in, that I 
elected to sit outside. The last I saw of Giovanni Car- 
lavero was his running through the town by the side of 
the jingling wheels, clasping my hand as I stretched it 
down from the box, charging me with a thousand last 
loving and dutiful messages to his dear patron, and 
finally looking in at the bottle, as it reposed inside, with 
an admiration of its honorable way of travelling that was 
beyond measure delightful. 

And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly beloved 
and highly treasured Bottle began to cost me, no man 
knows. It was my precious charge through a long tour ; 
and, for hundreds of miles, I never had it off my mind by 
day or by night. Over bad roads — and they were many 
— I clung to it with affectionate desperation. Up moun- 
tains, I looked in at it, and saw it helplessly tilting over 
on its back, with terror. At innumerable inn doors, 
when the weather was bad, I was obliged to be put into 
my vehicle before the Bottle could be got in, and was 
obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before human aid 
could come near me. The Imp of the same name, except 
that his associations were all evil and these associations 
were all good, would have been a less troublesome trav- 
elling companion. I might have served Mr. Cruikshank 
as a subject for a new illustration of the miseries of the 
Bottle. The National Temperance Society might have 
made a powerful Tract of me. 

The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle 
greatly aggravated my difficulties. It was like the apple- 
pie in the child’s book. Parma pouted at it, Modena 
mocked it, Tuscany tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome 
refused it, Austria accused it. Soldiers suspected it, 
Jesuits jobbed it. I composed a neat Oration, develop- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


305 


ing my inoffensive intentions in connection with this Bot- 
tle, and delivered it in an infinity of guard-houses, at a 
multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge, angle, 
and rampart of a complete system of fortifications. Fift^ 
times a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated sol- 
diery about the Bottle. Through the filthy degradation 
of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as much diffi- 
culty in working my way with the Bottle, as if it had 
bottled up a complete system of heretical theology. In 
the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a 
soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars 
of all four denominations incessantly pounced on the 
Bottle, and made it a pretext for extorting money from 
me. Quires — quires do I say ? Reams — of forms 
illegibly printed on whity-brown paper were filled up 
about the Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamp 
ing and sanding than I had ever seen before. In conse- 
quence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it was always 
irregular, and always latent with dismal penalties of 
going back or not going forward, which were only to be 
abated by the silver crossing of a base hand, poked, 
shirtless, out of a ragged uniform sleeve. Under all 
discouragements, however, I stuck to my Bottle, and 
held firm to my resolution that every drop of its contents 
should reach the Bottlers destination. 

The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of trou- 
bles on its own separate account. What corkscrews did 
I see the military power bring out against that Bottle ; 
what gimlets, spikes, divining-rods, gauges, and unknown 
tests and instruments ! At some places they persisted 
in declaring that the wine must not be passed without 
being opened and tasted ; I, pleading to the contrary, 
used then to argue the question, seated on the Bottle, 
lest they should open it in spite of me. In the southern 
parts of Italy, more violent shrieking, face-making, and 
gesticulating, greater vehemence of speech and counte- 
nance and action, went on about that Bottle than would 
attend fifty murders in a northern latitude. It raised 
important functionaries out of their beds in the dead of 
night. I have known half a dozen military lanterns to 
disperse themselves at all points of a great sleeping 
Piazza, each lantern summoning some official creature to 
20 


806 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


get up, put on his cocked hat instantly, and come and 
stop the Bottle. It was characteristic that, while this 
innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting 
from little town to town. Signor Mazzini and the fiery 
cross were traversing Italy from end to end. 

Still I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English 
gentleman all of the olden time. The more the Bottle 
was interfered with, the stancher I became (if possible) 
in my first determination that my countryman should 
have it delivered to him intact, as the man whom he had 
so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it to 
me. If ever I had been obstinate in my days, — and I 
may have been, say once or twice, — I was obstinate 
about the Bottle. But I made it a rule always to keep 
a pocketful of small coin at its service, and never to be 
out of temper in its cause. Thus I and the Bottle made 
our way. Once we had a breakdown ; rather a bad 
breakdown, on a steep, high place, with the sea below us, 
on a tempestuous evening when it blew great guns. Wo 
were driving four wild horses abreast. Southern fashion, 
and there was some little difficulty in stopping them. I 
was outside, and not thrown off, but no words can describe 
my feelings when I saw the Bottle — travelling inside, 
as usual — burst the door open, and roll obesely out into 
the road. A blessed Bottle with a charmed existence, 
he took no hurt, and we repaired damage, and went on 
triumphant. 

A thousand representations were made to me that the 
Bottle must be left at this place or that, and called for 
again. I never yielded to one of them, and never parted 
from the Bottle on any pretence, consideration, threat, or 
entreaty. I had no faith in any official receipt for the 
Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one. 
These unmanageable politics at last brought me and the 
Bottle, still triumphant, to Genoa. There I took a tender 
and reluctant leave of him for a few weeks, and con- 
signed him to a trusty English captain to be conveyed to 
the Port of London by sea. 

While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read 
the Shipping Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been 
an underwriter. There was some stormy weather after I 
myself had got to England by way of Switzerland and 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


307 


France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the Bottle 
might be wrecked. At last, to my great joy, I received 
notice of his safe arrival, and immediately went down to 
Saint Katharine’s Docks, and found him in a state of hon- 
orable captivity in the Custom House. 

The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before 
the generous Englishman, — probably it had been some- 
thing like vinegar when I took it up from Giovanni Car- 
lavero, — but not a drop of it was spilled or gone. And 
the Englishman told me, with much emotion in his face 
and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to 
him so sweet and sound. And long afterwards the Bot- 
tle graced his table. And the last time I saw him in this 
world that misses him, he took me aside in a crowd, to 
say, with his amiable smile, We were talking of you 
only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had been there, 
for I had some Claret up in Carlavero’s Bottle.” 


308 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XXIX. 

A SMALL. STAR IN THE EAST. 

I HAD been looking, yesternight, through the famous Dance 
of Death, and to-day the grim old wood-cuts arose in my mind 
with the new significance of a ghastly monotony not to be found 
in the original. The weird skeleton rattled along the streets 
before me, and struck fiercely, but it was never at the pains 
of assuming a disguise. It played on no dulcimer here, was 
crowned with no flowers, waved no plume, minced in no flowing 
robe or train, lifted no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, 
counted no gold. It was simply a bare, gaunt, famished skele- 
ton, slaying its way along. 

The borders of Ratcliffe and Stepney, eastward of London, 
and giving on the impure river, were the scene of this uncom- 
promising Dance of Death, upon a drizzling November day. 
A squalid maze of streets, courts, and alleys of miserable houses 
let out in single rooms. A wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger. 
A mud-desert chiefly inhabited by a tribe from whom employ- 
ment has departed, or to whom it comes but fitfully and rarely. 
They are not skilled mechanics in any wise. They are but 
laborers- Dock laborers, water-side laborers, coal-porters, bal- 
last-heavers, such like hewers of wood and drawers of water. 
But they have come into existence, and they propagate their 
wretched race. 

One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to 
play off here. It had stuck election bills on the walls, which 
the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags. It had 
even summed up the state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters 
of one ruined house. It adjured the free and independent starv- 
ers to vote for Thisman and vote for Thatman ; not to plump, 
as they valued the state of parties and the national prosperity 
(both of great importance to them, I think!), but, by returning 
Thisman and Thatman, each naught without the other, to com- 
pound a glorious and immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is 
nowhere more cruelly ironi(!al in the original monkish idea I 

Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisma'- 
and Thatman, and of the public blessing called Party, for st*^t > 


THE uncommercial TRAVELLER. 


309 


ing the degeneracy, physical and moral, of many thousands (who 
shall say how many ?) of the English race ; for devising employ- 
ment useful to the community for those who want but to work 
and live ; for equalizing rates, cultivating waste lands, facilitating 
emigration, and, above all things, saving and utilizing the on- 
coming generations and thereby changing ever-growing national 
weakness into strength, — pondering in my mind, I say, these 
hopeful exertions, I turned down a narrow street to look into a 
house or two. 

It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side. Nearly 
all the outer doors of the houses stood open. I took the first 
entry and knocked at a parlor door. Might I come in ? I might, 
if I plased, sur. 

The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long 
strips of wood, about some wharf or barge, and they had just 
now been thrust into the otherwise empty grate to make two 
iron pots boil. There was some fish in one, and there were 
some potatoes in the other. The flare of the burning wood en- 
abled me to see a table and a broken chair or so, and some old 
cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece. It was not 
until I had spoken with the woman a few minutes that I saw a 
horrible brown heap on the floor in a corner, which, but for pre- 
vious experience in this dismal wise, I might not have sus- 
pected to be “ the bed.” There was something thrown upon it, 
and I asked what that was. 

“ ’T is the poor craythur that stays here, sur, and ’t is very 
bad she is, and ’t is very bad she ’s been this long time, and ’t is 
better she ’ll never be, and ’t is slape she doos all day, and ’t is 
wake she doos all night, and ’t is the lead, sur.” 

“The what?” 

“The lead, sur. Sure ’t is the lead-mills, where the women 
gets took on at eighteen pence a day, sur, when they makes ap- 
plicaytion early enough and is lucky and wanted, and ’t is lead- 
pisoned she is, sur, and some of them gets lead-pisoned soon and 
some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some but not many 
niver, and ’t is all according to the constitooshun, sur, and some 
constitooshuns is strong and some is weak, and her constitooshun 
is lead-pisoned bad as can be, sur, and her brain is coming out 
at her ear, and it hurts her dreadful, and that ’s what it is and 
niver no more and niver no less, sur.” 

The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent over 
her, took a bandage from her head, and threw open a back door 
to let in the daylight upon it, from the smallest and most miser- 
able back yard I ever saw. 

“ That ’s what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned, and it 


310 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


cooms from her night and day the poor sick craythur, and the 
pain of it is dreadful, and God he knows that my husband has 
walked the sthreets these four days being a laborer and is walk- 
ing them now and is ready to work and no work for him and 
no fire and no food but the bit in the pot, and no more than ten 
shillings in a fortnight, God be good to us, and it is poor we are 
and dark it is and could it is indeed ! ” 

Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my 
self-denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give nothing 
in the course of these visits. I did this to try the people. I 
may state at once that my closest observation could not detect 
any indication whatever of an expectation that I would give 
money ; they were grateful to be talked to about their miserable 
affairs, and sympathy was plainly a comfort to them ; but they 
neither asked for money in any case, nor showed the least trace 
of surprise or disappointment or resentment at my giving none. 

The woman’s married daughter had by this time come down 
from her room on the floor above, to join in the conversation. 
She herself had been to the lead-mills very early that morning 
to be “ took on,” but had not succeeded. She had four children, 
and her husband, also a water-side laborer and then out seeking 
work, seemed in no better case as to finding it than her father. 
She was English, and by nature of a buxom figure and cheerful. 
Both in her poor dress and in her mother’s there was an effort 
to keep up some appearance of neatness. She knew all about 
the sufferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead- 
poisoning, and how the symptoms came on, and how they grew, 
— having often seen them. The very smell when you stood in- 
side the door of the works was enough to knock you down, she 
said, yet she was going back again to get “ took on.” What could 
she do ? Better be ulcerated and paralyzed for eighteen-pence 
a day, while it lasted, than see the children starve. 

A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the back 
door and all manner of offence, had been for some time the 
sleeping-place of the sick young woman. But the nights being 
now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets “ gone to the leaving 
shop,” she lay all night where she lay all day, and was lying 
then. The woman of the room, her husband, this most misera- 
ble patient, and two others, lay on the one brown heap together 
for warmth. 

“ God bless you, sir, and thank you ! ” were the parting words 
from these people, — gratefully spoken too, — with which I left 
this place. 

Some streets away, I tapped at another parlor door on another 
ground-floor. Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and four 


TFIE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


311 


children sitting at a washing-stool by way of table, at their din- 
ner of bread and infused tea-leaves. There was a very scanty 
cinderous fire in the grate by which they sat, and there was a 
tent bedstead in the room, with a bed upon it and a coverlet. 
The man did not rise when I went in, nor during my stay, but 
civilly inclined his head on my pulling off my hat, and, in an- 
swer to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question or 
two, said, “ Certainly.” There being a window at each end of 
this room, back and front, it might have been ventilated ; but it 
was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was very sickening. 

The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at her 
husband’s elbow, and he glanced up at her as if for help. It 
soon appeared that he was rather deaf. He was a slow, simple 
fellow of about thirty. 

“ What was he by trade ? ” 

“ Gentleman asks what you are by trade, John.” 

“ I am a boiler-maker ; ” looking about him with an exceed- 
ingly perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unaccountably 
vanished. 

“ He ain’t a mechanic, you understand, sir,” the wife put in ; 
he ’s only a laborer.” 

“ Are you in work ? ” 

He looked up at his wife again. “ Gentleman says are you 
in work, John ? ” 

“ In work ! ” cried this forlorn boiler-maker, staring aghast at 
his wife, and then working his vision’s way very slowly round to 
me ; “ Lord, no ! ” 

“ Ah ! He ain’t indeed ! ” said the poor woman, shaking her 
head, as she looked at the four children in succession, and then 
at him. 

“ Work ! ” said the boiler-maker, still seeking that evaporated 
boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and then in 
the features of his second son at his knee, “ I wish I was in 
work ! I have n’t had more than a day’s work to do this three 
weeks.” 

“ How have you lived?” 

A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the would 
be boiler-maker, as he stretched out the short sleeve of his 
threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her out, “ On 
the work of the wife.” 

I forgot where boiler-making had gone to, or where he sup- 
posed it had gone to ; but he added some resigned information 
on that head, coupled with an expression of his belief that it was 
never coming back. 

The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable 


312 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


She did slop-work ; made pea-jackets. She produced the pea- 
jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon the bed, — the 
only piece of furniture in the room on which to spread it. She 
showed how much of it she made, and how much was afterwards 
finished off by the machine. According to her calculation at 
the moment, deducting what her trimming cost her, she got for 
making a pea-jacket tenpence half-penny, and she could make 
one in something less than two days. 

But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of course 
it did n’t come through the second hand for nothing. Why did 
it come through the second hand at all ? Why, this way. The 
second hand took the risk of the given-out work, you see. If 
she had money enough to pay the security deposit — call it two 
pound — she could get the work from the first hand, and so the 
second would not have to be deducted for. But, having no 
money at all, the second hand come in and took its profit, and 
so the whole worked down to tenpence half-penny. Having 
explained all this with great intelligence, even with some little 
pride, and without a whine or murmur, "she folded her work 
again, sat down by her husband’s side at the washing-stool, and 
resumed her dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal was, on 
the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what not 
other sordid makeshifts ; shabby as the woman was in dress, and 
toning down towards the Bosjesman color, with want of nutri- 
ment and washing, — there was positively a dignity in her, as 
the family anchor just holding the poor shipwrecked boiler- 
maker’s bark. When I left the room, the boiler-maker’s eyes 
were slowly turned towards her, as if his last hope of ever again 
seeing that vanished boiler lay in her direction. 

These people had never applied for parish relief but once ; 
and that was when the husband met with a disabling accident at 
his work. 

Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first 
floor. The woman apologized for its being in “ an untidy 
mess.” The day was Saturday, and she was boiling the chil- 
dren’s clothes in a saucepan on the hearth. There was nothing 
else into which she could have put them. There was no crock- 
ery, or tinware, or tub, or bucket. There was an old gallipot 
or two, and there was a broken bottle or so, and there were 
some broken boxes for seats. The last small scraping of coals 
left was raked together in a corner of the floor. There were 
some rags in an open cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner 
of the room was a crazy old F rench bedstead, with a man lying 
on his back upon it, in a ragged pilot jacket and rough oil-skin 
fantail hat. The room was perfectly black. It was difficult to 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


813 


believe, at first, that it was not purposely colored black, the 
walls were so begrimed. 

As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children’s clothes 
— she had not even a piece of soap to wash them with — and 
apologizing for her occupation, I could take in all these things 
without appearing to notice them, and could even correct my 
inventory. I had missed, at the first glance, some half a pound 
of bread in the otherwise empty safe, an old red ragged crinoline 
hanging on the handle of the door by which I had entered, and 
certain fragments of rusty iron, scattered on the floor, which 
looked like broken tools and a piece of stove-pipe. A child 
stood looking on. On the box nearest to the fire sat two 
younger children; one a delicate and pretty little creature 
whom the other sometimes kissed. 

This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was 
degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion. But her figure, 
and the ghost of a certain vivacity about her, and the spectre 
of a dimple in her cheek, carried my memory strangely back to 
the old days of the Adelphi Theatre, London, when Mrs. Fitz- 
william was the friend of Victorine. 

“ May I ask you what your husband is ? ” 

“ He ’s a coal-porter, sir,” — with a glance and a sigh towards 
the bed. 

“ Is he out of work ? ” 

“ Oh yes, sir, and work ’s at all times very, very scanty with 
him, and now he ’s laid up.” 

“ It ’s my legs,” said the man upon the bed. “ I ’ll unroll 
’em.” And immediately began. 

“ Have you any older children ? ” 

“ I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a 
son that does what he can. She ’s at her work now, and he ’s 
trying for work.” 

“ Do they live here ? ” 

They sleep here. They can’t afford to pay more rent, and 
so they come here at night. The rent is very hard upon us. 
It ’s rose upon us too, now, — sixpence a week, — on account 
of these new charges in the law, about the rates. We are a 
week behind ; the landlord ’s been shaking and rattling at that 
door frightfully ; he says he ’ll turn us out. I don’t know what ’s 
to come of it.” 

The man upon the bed ruefully interposed : “ Here ’s my legs. 
The skin ’s broke, beside the swelling. I have had a many 
kicks, working, one way and another.” 

He looked at his legs (which were much discolored and mis- 
shapen) for a while, and then appearing to remember that they 


314 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


were not popular with his family, rolled them up again, as if 
they were something in the nature of maps or plans that were 
not wanted to be referred to, lay hopelessly down on his 
back once more with his fan-tail hat over his face, and stirred 
not. 

“ Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cupboard ? ” 

“ Yes,” replied the woman. 

“ With the children ? ” 

“ Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We have little 
to cover us.” 

“ Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I 
see there ? ” 

“ Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our breakfast, 
with water. I don’t know what’s to come of it.” 

“ Have you no prospect of improvement ? ” 

“ If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he ’ll bring it home. 
Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and may be able 
to do something towards the rent. If not, I don’t know what ’s 
to come of it.” 

“ This is a sad state of things.” 

“ Yes, sir, it ’s a hard, hard life. Take care of the stairs as 
you go, sir — they ’re broken — and good day, sir ! ” 

These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, 
and received no out-of-door relief. 

In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very 
decent woman with five children, — the last a baby, and she 
herself a patient of the parish doctor, — to whom, her husband 
being in the hospital, the Union allowed, for the support of her- 
self and family, four shillings a week and five loaves. I suppose 
when Thisman, M. P., and Thatman, M. P., and the public 
blessing Party lay their heads together in course of time, and 
come to an equilization of Rating, she may go down the Dance 
of Death to the tune of sixpence more. 

I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could 
not bear the contemplation of the children. Such heart as I had 
summoned to sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed 
me when I looked at the children. I saw how young they were, 
how hungry, how serious and still. I thought of them sick and 
dying in those lairs. I could think of them dead without an- 
guish ; but to think of them so suffering and so dying quite un- 
manned me. 

Down by the river’s bank in Ratcliffe, I was turning upward 
by a side street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes 
rested on the inscription across the road, “ East London Chil- 
dren’s Hospital.” I could scarcely have seen an inscription 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


315 


better suited to my frame of mind, and I went across and went 
straight in. 

I found the Children’s Hospital established in an old sail-loft 
or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means. 
There were trap-doors in the floors where goods had been 
hoisted up and down ; heavy feet and heavy weights had started 
every knot in the well-trodden planking ; inconvenient bulks 
and beams and awkward staircases perplexed my passage 
through the wards. But I found it airy, sweet, and clean. In 
its seven-and-thirty beds I saw but little beauty, for starvation in 
the second or third generation takes a pinched look ; but I saw 
the sufferings of both infancy and childhood tenderly assauged ; 
I heard the little patients answering to pet, playful names ; 
the light touch of a delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of 
arms for me to pity, and the claw-like little hands, as she did 
so, twined themselves lovingly around her wedding-ring. 

One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael’s angels. 
The tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain, and it was 
suffering with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time 
a plaintive, though not impatient or complaining, little sound. 
The smooth curve of the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in 
its condensation of infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes 
were most lovely. It happened, as I stooped at the foot of the 
bed, that these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expres- 
sion of wondering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes 
in very little children. They remained fixed on mine, and 
never turned from me while I stood there. When the utterance 
of that plaintive sound shook the little form, the gaze still re- 
mained unchanged. I felt as though the child implored me to 
tell the story of the little hospital in which it was sheltered to 
any gentle heart I could address. Laying my world-worn hand 
upon the little unmarked clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a 
silent promise that I would do so. 

A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have 
bought and fitted up this building for its present noble use, and 
have quietly settled themselves in it as its medical officers and 
directors. Both have had considerable practical experience of 
medicine and surgery ; he, as house-surgeon of a great London 
hospital; she, as a very earnest student, tested % severe ex- 
amination, and also as a nurse of the sick poor during the preva- 
lence of cholera. 

AVith every qualification to lure them away, with youth and 
accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response 
in any breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive circum- 
stance inseparable from such a neighborhood, there they dwelk 


806 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


get up, put on his cocked hat instantly, and come and 
stop the Bottle. It was characteristic that, while this 
innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting 
from little town to town. Signor Mazzini and the fiery 
cross were traversing Italy from end to end. 

Still I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English 
gentleman all of the olden time. The more the Bottle 
was interfered with, the stancher I became (if possible) 
in my first determination that my countryman should 
have it delivered to him intact, as the man whom he had 
so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it to 
me. If ever I had been obstinate in my days, — and I 
may have been, say once or twice, — I was obstinate 
about the Bottle. But I made it a rule always to keep 
a pocketful of small coin at its service, and never to be 
out of temper in its cause. Thus I and the Bottle made 
our way. Once we had a breakdown ; rather a bad 
breakdown, on a steep, high place, with the sea below us, 
on a tempestuous evening when it blew great guns. Wo 
were driving four wild horses abreast, Southern fashion, 
and there was some little difficulty in stopping them. I 
was outside, and not thrown off, but no words can describe 
my feelings when I saw the Bottle — travelling inside, 
as usual — burst the door open, and roll obesely out into 
the road. A blessed Bottle with a charmed existence, 
he took no hurt, and we repaired damage, and went on 
triumphant. 

A thousand representations were made to me that the 
Bottle must be left at this place or that, and called for 
again. I never yielded to one of them, and never parted 
from the Bottle on any pretence, consideration, threat, or 
entreaty. I had no faith in any official receipt for the 
Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one. 
These unmanageable politics at last brought me and the 
Bottle, still triumphant, to Genoa. There I took a tender 
and reluctant leave of him for a few weeks, and con- 
signed him to a trusty English captain to be conveyed to 
the Port of London by sea. 

While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read 
the Shipping Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been 
an underwriter. There was some stormy weather after I 
myself had got to England by way of Switzerland and 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


307 


France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the Bottle 
might be wrecked. At last, to my great joy, I received 
notice of his safe arrival, and immediately went down to 
Saint Katharine's Bocks, and found him in a state of hon- 
orable captivity in the Custom House. 

The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before 
the generous Englishman, — probably it had been some- 
thing like vinegar when I took it up from Giovanni Car- 
lavero, — but not a drop of it was spilled or gone. And 
the Englishman told me, with much emotion in his face 
and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to 
him so sweet and sound. And long afterwards the Bot- 
tle graced his table. And the last time I saw him in this 
world that misses him, he took me aside in a crowd, to 
say, with his amiable smile, “We were talking of you 
only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had been there, 
for I had some Claret up in Carlavero's Bottle." 


308 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XXIX. 

A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 

I HAD been looking, yesternight, through the famous Dance 
of Death, and to-day the grim old wood-cuts arose in my mind 
with the new significance of a ghastly monotony not to be found 
in the original. The weird skeleton rattled along the streets 
before me, and struck fiercely, but it was never at the pains 
of assuming a disguise. It played on no dulcimer here, was 
crowned with no flowers, waved no plume, minced in no flowing 
robe or train, lifted no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, 
counted no gold. It was simply a bare, gaunt, famished skele- 
ton, slaying its way along. 

The borders of E-atcliffe and Stepney, eastward of London, 
and giving on the impure river, were the scene of this uncom- 
promising Dance of Death, upon a drizzling November day. 
A squalid maze of streets, courts, and alleys of miserable houses 
let out in single rooms. A wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger. 
A mud-desert chiefly inhabited by a tribe from whom employ- 
ment has departed, or to whom it comes but fitfully and rarely. 
They are not skilled mechanics in any wise. They are but 
laborers- Dock laborers, water-side laborers, coal-porters, bal- 
last-heavers, such like hewers of wood and drawers of water. 
But they have come into existence, and they propagate their 
wretched race. 

One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to 
play off here. It had stuck election bills on the walls, whioh 
the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags. It had 
even summed up the state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters 
of one ruined house. It adjured the free and independent starv- 
ers to vote for Thisman and vote for Thatman ; not to plump, 
as they valued the state of parties and the national prosperity 
(both of great importance to them, I think!), but, by returning 
Thisman and Thatman, each naught without the other, to com- 
pound a glorious and immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is 
nowhere more cruelly ironicul in the original monkish idea I 

Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisma^^ 
and Thatman, and of the public blessing called Party, for st^i > 


THE uncommercial TRAVELLER. 


309 


ing the degeneracy, physical and moral, of many thousands (who 
shall say how many ?) of the English race ; for devising employ- 
ment useful to^the community for those who want but to work 
and live ; for equalizing rates, cultivating waste lands, facilitating 
emigration, and, above all things, saving and utilizing the on- 
coming generations and thereby changing ever-growing national 
weakness into strength, — pondering in my mind, I say, these 
hopeful exertions, I turned down a narrow street to look into a 
house or two. 

It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side. Nearly 
all the outer doors of the houses stood open. I took the first 
entry and knocked at a parlor door. Might I come in ? I might, 
if I plased, sur. 

The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long 
strips of wood, about some wharf or barge, and they had just 
now been thrust into the otherwise empty grate to make two 
iron pots boil. There was some fish in one, and there were 
some potatoes in the other. The flare of the burning wood en- 
abled me to see a table and a broken chair or so, and some old 
cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece. It was not 
until I had spoken with the woman a few minutes that I saw a 
horrible brown heap on the floor in a corner, which, but for pre- 
vious experience in this dismal wise, I might not have sus- 
pected to be “ the bed.” There was something thrown upon it, 
and I asked what that was. 

“ ’T is the poor craythur that stays here, sur, and ’t is very 
bad she is, and ’t is very bad she ’s been this long time, and ’t is 
better she ’ll never be, and ’t is slape she doos all day, and ’t is 
wake she doos all night, and ’t is the lead, sur.” 

“ The what ? ” 

“The lead, sur. Sure ’t is the lead-mills, where the women 
gets took on at eighteen pence a day, sur, when they makes ap- 
plicaytion early enough and is lucky and wanted, and ’t is lead- 
pisoned she is, sur, and some of them gets lead-pisoned soon and 
some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some but not many 
niver, and ’t is all according to the constitooshun, sur, and some 
constitooshuns is strong and some is weak, and her constitooshun 
is lead-pisoned bad as can be, sur, and her brain is coming out 
at her ear, and it hurts her dreadful, and that ’s what it is and 
niver no more and niver no less, sur.” 

The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent over 
her, took a bandage from her head, and threw open a back door 
to let in the daylight upon it, from the smallest and most miser- 
able back yard I ever saw. 

“ That ’s what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned, and it 


310 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


cooms from her night and day the poor sick craythur, and the 
pain of it is dreadful, and God he knows that my husband has 
walked the sthreets these four days being a laborer and is walk- 
ing them now and is ready to work and no work for him and 
no fire and no food but the bit in the pot, and no more than ten 
shillings in a fortnight, God be good to us, and it is poor we are 
and dark it is and could it is indeed ! ” 

Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my 
self-denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give nothing 
in the course of these visits. I did this to try the people. I 
may state at once that my closest observation could not detect 
any indication whatever of an expectation that I would give 
money ; they were grateful to be talked to about their miserable 
affairs, and sympathy was plainly a comfort to them ; but they 
neither asked for money in any case, nor showed the least trace 
of surprise or disappointment or resentment at my giving none. 

The woman’s married daughter had by this time come down 
from her room on the floor above, to join in the conversation. 
She herself had been to the lead-mills very early that morning 
to be “ took on,” but had not succeeded. She had four children, 
and her husband, also a water-side laborer and then out seeking 
work, seemed in no better case as to finding it than her father. 
She was English, and by nature of a buxom figure and cheerful. 
Both in her poor dress and in her mother’s there was an effort 
to keep up some appearance of neatness. She knew all about 
the sufferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead- 
poisoning, and how the symptoms came on, and how they grew, 
— having often seen them. The very smell when you stood in- 
side the door of the works was enough to knock you down, she 
said, yet she was going back again to get “ took on.” What could 
she do ? Better be ulcerated and paralyzed for eighteen-pence 
a day, while it lasted, than see the children starve. 

A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the back 
door and all manner of offence, had been for some time the 
sleeping-place of the sick young woman. But the nights being 
now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets “ gone to the leaving 
shop,” she lay all night where she lay all day, and was lying 
then. The woman of the room, her husband, this most misera- 
ble patient, and two others, lay on the one brown heap together 
for warmth. 

“ God bless you, sir, and thank you ! ” were the parting words 
from these people, — gratefully spoken too, — with which I left 
this place. 

Some streets away, I tapped at another parlor door on another 
ground-floor. Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and four 


TFIE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


311 


children sitting at a washing-stool by way of table, at their din- 
ner of bread and infused tea-leaves. There was a very scanty 
cinderous fire in the grate by which they sat, and there was a 
tent bedstead in the room, with a bed upon it and a coverlet. 
The man did not rise when I went in, nor during my stay, but 
civilly inclined his head on my pulling off my hat, and, in an- 
swer to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question or 
two, said, “ Certainly.” There being a window at each end of 
this room, back and front, it might have been ventilated ; but it 
was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was very sickening. 

The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at her 
husband’s elbow, and he glanced up at her as if for help. It 
soon appeared that he was rather deaf. He was a slow, simple 
fellow of about thirty. 

“ What was he by trade ? ” 

“ Gentleman asks what you are by trade, John.” 

“ I am a boiler-maker ; ” looking about him with an exceed- 
ingly perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unaccountably 
vanished. 

“ He ain’t a mechanic, you understand, sir,” the wife put in ; 
“ he ’s only a laborer.” 

“ Are you in work ? ” 

He looked up at his wife again. “ Gentleman says are you 
in work, John ? ” 

“ In work ! ” cried this forlorn boiler-maker, staring aghast at 
his wife, and then working his vision’s way very slowly round to 
me ; “ Lord, no ! ” 

“ Ah ! He ain’t indeed ! ” said the poor woman, shaking her 
head, as she looked at the four children in succession, and then 
at him. 

“ Work ! ” said the boiler-maker, still seeking that evaporated 
boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and then in 
the features of his second son at his knee, “ I wish I was in 
work ! I have n’t had more than a day’s work to do this three 
weeks.” 

“ How have you lived?” 

A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the would 
be boiler-maker, as he stretched out the short sleeve of his 
threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her out, “ On 
the work of the wife.” 

I forgot where boiler-making had gone to, or where he sup- 
posed it had gone to ; but he added some resigned information 
on that head, coupled with an expression of his belief that it was 
never coming back. 

The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable 


312 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


She did slop-work ; made pea-jackets. She produced the pea- 
jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon the bed, — the 
only piece of furniture in the room on which to spread it. She 
showed how much of it she made, and how much was afterwards 
finished off by the machine. According to her calculation at 
the moment, deducting what her trimming cost her, she got for 
making a pea-jacket tenpence half-penny, and she could make 
one in something less than two days. 

But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of course 
it did n’t come through the second hand for nothing. Why did 
it come through the second hand at all ? Why, this way. The 
second hand took the risk of the given-out work, you see. If 
she had money enough to pay the security deposit — call it two 
pound — she could get the work from the first hand, and so the 
second would not have to be deducted for. But, having no 
money at all, the second hand come in and took its profit, and 
so the whole worked down to tenpence half-penny. Having 
explained all this with great intelligence, even with some little 
pride, and without a whine or murmur, "she folded her work 
again, sat down by her husband’s side at the washing-stool, and 
resumed her dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal was, on 
the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what not 
other sordid makeshifts ; shabby as the woman was in dress, and 
toning down towards the Bosjesman color, with want of nutri- 
ment and washing, — there was positively a dignity in her, as 
the family anchor just holding the poor shipwrecked boiler- 
maker’s bark. When I left the room, the boiler-maker’s eyes 
were slowly turned towards her, as if his last hope of ever again 
seeing that vanished boiler lay in her direction. 

These people had never applied for parish relief but once ; 
and that was when the husband met with a disabling accident at 
his work. 

Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first 
floor. The woman apologized for its being in “ an untidy 
mess.” The day was Saturday, and she was boiling the chil- 
dren’s clothes in a saucepan on the hearth. There was nothing 
else into which she could have put them. There was no crock- 
ery, or tinware, or tub, or bucket. There was an old gallipot 
or two, and there was a broken bottle or so, and there were 
some broken boxes for seats. The last small scraping of coals 
left was raked together in a corner of the floor. There were 
some rags in an open cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner 
of the room was a crazy old French bedstead, with a man lying 
on his back upon it, in a ragged pilot jacket and rough oil-skin 
fantail hat. The room was perfectly black. It was difficult to 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


313 


believe, at first, that it was not purposely colored black, the 
walls were so begrimed. 

As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children’s clothes 
— she had not even a piece of soap to wash them with — and 
apologizing for her occupation, I could take in all these things 
without appearing to notice them, and could even correct my 
inventory. I had missed, at the first glance, some half a pound 
of bread in the otherwise empty safe, an old red ragged crinoline 
hanging on the handle of the door by which I had entered, and 
certain fragments of rusty iron, scattered on the floor, which 
looked like broken tools and a piece of stove-pipe. A child 
stood looking on. On the box nearest to the fire sat two 
younger children; one a delicate and pretty little creature 
whom the other sometimes kissed. 

This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was 
degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion. But her figure, 
and the ghost of a certain vivacity about her, and the spectre 
of a dimple in her cheek, carried my memory strangely back to 
the old days of the Adelphi Theatre, London, when Mrs. Fitz- 
william was the friend of Victorine. 

“ May I ask you what your husband is ? ” 

“ He ’s a coal-porter, sir,” — with a glance and a sigh towards 
the bed. 

“ Is he out of work ? ” 

“ Oh yes, sir, and work ’s at all times very, very scanty with 
him, and now he ’s laid up.” 

“It’s my legs,” said the man upon the bed. “I’ll unroll 
’em.” And immediately began. 

“ Have you any older children ? ” 

“ I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a 
son that does what he can. She ’s at her work now, and he ’s 
trying for work.” 

“ Do they live here ? ” 

“ They sleep here. They can’t afford to pay more rent, and 
so they come here at night. The rent is very hard upon us. 
It’s rose upon us too, now, — sixpence a week, — on account 
of these new charges in the law, about the rates. We are a 
week behind ; the landlord ’s been shaking and rattling at that 
door frightfully ; he says he ’ll turn us out. I don’t know what ’s 
to come of it.” 

The man upon the bed ruefully interposed : “ Here ’s my legs. 
The skin ’s broke, beside the swelling. I have had a many 
kicks, working, one way and another.” 

He looked at his legs (which were much discolored and mis- 
shapen) for a while, and then appearing to remember that they 


814 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


were not popular with his family, rolled them up again, as if 
they were something in the nature of maps or plans that were 
not wanted to be referred to, lay hopelessly down on his 
back once more with his fan-tail hat over his face, and stirred 
not. 

“ Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cupboard ? ” 

“ Yes,” replied the woman. 

“ With the children ? ” 

“ Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We have little 
to cover us.” 

“ Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I 
see there ? ” 

“ Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our breakfast, 
with water. I don’t know what’s to come of it.” 

“ Have you no prospect of improvement ? ” 

“ If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he ’ll bring it home. 
Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and may be able 
to do something towards the rent. If not, I don’t know what ’s 
to come of it.” 

“ This is a sad state of things.” 

“ Yes, sir, it ’s a hard, hard life. Take care of the stairs as 
you go, sir — they ’re broken — and good day, sir ! ” 

These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, 
and received no out-of-door relief. 

In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very 
decent woman with five children, — the last a baby, and she 
herself a patient of the parish doctor, — to whom, her husband 
being in the hospital, the Union allowed, for the support of her- 
self and family, four shillings a week and five loaves. I suppose 
when Thisman, M. P., and Thatman, M. P., and the public 
blessing Party lay their heads together in course of time, and 
come to an equilization of Rating, she may go down the Dance 
of Death to the tune of sixpence more. 

I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could 
not bear the contemplation of the children. Such heart as I had 
summoned to sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed 
me when I looked at the children. I saw how young they were, 
how hungry, how serious and still. I thought of them sick and 
dying in those lairs. I could think of them dead without an- 
guish ; but to think of them so suffering and so dying quite un- 
manned me. 

Down by the river’s bank in Ratcliffe, I was turning upward 
by a side street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes 
rested on the inscription across the road, “ East London Chil- 
dren’s Hospital.” I could scarcely have seen an inscription 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


315 


better suited to my frame of mind, and I went across and went 
straight in. 

I found the Children’s Hospital established in an old sail-loft 
or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means. 
There were trap-doors in the floors where goods had been 
hoisted up and down ; heavy feet and heavy weights had started 
every knot in the well-trodden planking ; inconvenient bulks 
and beams and awkward staircases perplexed my passage 
through the wards. But I found it airy, sweet, and clean. In 
its seven-and-thirty beds I saw but little beauty, for starvation in 
the second or third generation takes a pinched look ; but I saw 
the sufferings of both infancy and childhood tenderly assauged ; 
I heard the little patients answering to pet, playful names ; 
the light touch of a delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of 
arms for me to pity, and the claw-like little hands, as she did 
so, twined themselves lovingly around her wedding-ring. 

One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael’s angels. 
The tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain, and it was 
suffering with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time 
a plaintive, though not impatient or complaining, little sound. 
The smooth curve of the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in 
its condensation of infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes 
were most lovely. It happened, as I stooped at the foot of the 
bed, that these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expres- 
sion of wondering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes 
in very little children. They remained fixed on mine, and 
never turned from me while I stood there. When the utterance 
of that plaintive sound shook the little form, the gaze still re- 
mained unchanged. I felt as though the child implored me to 
tell the story of the little hospital in which it was sheltered to 
any gentle heart I could address. Laying my world-worn hand 
upon the little unmarked clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a 
silent promise that I would do so. 

A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have 
bought and fitted up this building for its present noble use, and 
have quietly settled themselves in it as its medical officers and 
directors. Both have had considerable practical experience of 
medicine and surgery ; he, as house-surgeon of a great London 
hospital ; she, as a very earnest student, tested by severe ex- 
amination, and also as a nurse of the sick poor during the preva- 
lence of cholera. 

With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and 
accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response 
in any breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive circum- 
stance inseparable from such a neighborhood, there they dwell 


316 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


They live in the hospital itself, and their rooms are on its first 
floor. Sitting at their dinner-table, they could hear the cry of 
one of the children in pain. The lady’s piano, drawing-materi- 
als, books, and other such evidences of refinement, are as much 
a part of the rough place as the iron bedsteads of the little pa- 
tients. They are put to shifts for room, like passengers on board 
ship. The dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not by self- 
interest, but by their own magnetism and that of their cause) 
sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and has his washing appa- 
ratus in the sideboard. 

Their contented manner of making the best of the things 
around them, I found so pleasantly inseparable from their use- 
fulness ! Their pride in this partition that we put up ourselves, 
or in that partition that we took down, or in that other partition 
that we moved, or in the stove that was given us for the waiting 
room, or in our nightly conversion of the little consulting-room 
into a smoking-room. Their admiration of the situation, if we 
could only get rid of its one objectionable incident, the coal-yard 
at the back ! “ Our hospital carriage, presented by a friend, and 

very useful.” That was my presentation to a perambulator, for 
which a coach-house had been discovered in a corner down stairs, 
just large enough to hold it. Colored prints, in all stages of 
preparation for being added to those already decorating the 
wards, were plentiful ; a charming wooden phenomenon of a bird, 
with an impossible top-knot, who ducked his head when you set 
a counter weight going, had been inaugurated as a public statue 
that very morning ; and trotting about among the beds, on fa- 
miliar terms with all the patients, was a comical mongrel dog, 
called Poodles. This comical dog (quite a tonic in himself) was 
found characteristically starving at the door of the institution, 
and was taken in and fed, and has lived here ever since. An 
admirer of his mental endowments has presented him with a 
collar bearing the legend, “Judge not Poodles by external ap- 
pearances.” He was merrily wagging his tail on a boy’s pillow 
when he made this modest appeal to me. 

When this hospital was first opened, in January of the present 
year, the people could not possibly conceive but that somebody 
paid for the services rendered there ; and were disposed to claim 
them as a right, and to find fault if out of temper. They 
soon came to understand the case better, and have much in- 
creased in gratitude. The mothers of the patients avail them- 
selves very freely of the visiting rules ; the fathers often on 
Sundays. There is an unreasonable (but still, I think, touching 
and intelligible) tendency in the parents to take a child away to 
its wretched home, if on the point of death. One boy who had 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


317 


^hus been carried off on a rainy night, when in a violent state 
of inflammation, and who had been afterwards brought back, had 
been recovered with exceeding difficulty ; but he was a jolly 
boy, with a specially strong interest in his dinner, when I saw 
him. 

Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main causes 
of disease among these small patients. So nourishment, clean- 
liness, and ventilation are the main remedies. Discharged pa- 
tients are looked after, and invited to come and dine now and 
then ; so are certain famishing creatures who were never pa- 
tients. Both the lady and the gentleman are well acquainted, 
not only with the histories of the patients and their families, but 
with the characters and circumstances of great numbers of their 
neighbors ; of these they keep a register. It is their common 
experience that people sinking down by inches into deeper and 
deeper poverty will conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto 
the very last extremity. 

The nurses of this hospital are all young, — ranging, say, from 
nineteen to four-and-twenty. They have, even within these nar- 
row limits, what many well-endowed hospitals would not give 
them, a comfortable room of their own, in which to take their 
meals. It is a beautiful truth that interest in the children and 
sympathy with their sorrows bind these young women to their 
places far more strongly than any other consideration could. 
The best skilled of the nurses came originally from a kindred 
neighborhood, almost as poor, and she knew how much the 
work was needed. She is a fair dress-maker. The hospital 
cannot pay her as many pounds in the year as there are months 
in it, and one day the lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her 
about her improving her prospects and following her trade. 
“ No,” she said ; she could never be so useful or so happy else- 
where any more ; she must stay among the children. And she 
stays. One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a baby- 
boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her charge : 
a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough, laying hold of 
his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very solemnly 
out of a blanket. The melting of the pleasant face into de- 
lighted smiles as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick, 
and laughed at me, was almost worth my previous pain. 

An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called The 
Children’s Doctor. As I parted from my Children’s Doctor 
now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose 
buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of his 
dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his mustache, 
the exact realization of the Paris artist’s ideal as it was pre- 


318 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


sented on the stage. But no romancer that I know of has had 
the boldness to prefigure the life and home of this young hus- 
band and young wife in the Children’s Hospital in the East of 
London. 

I came away from Ratcliffe by the Stepney railway station to 
the Terminus at Fenchurch Street. Any one who will reverse 
that route may retrace my steps. 


THE UNCOMMEKCIAL TKAVELLEK. 


319 


XXX. 

ABOARD SHIP. 

My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Hu- 
man Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last reported 
of them, but have kept me continually on the move. I remain 
in the same idle employment. I never solicit an order, I never 
get any commission ; I am the rolling stone that gathers no 
moss, — unless any should by chance be found among these 
Samples. 

Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, 
and least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the 
harbor of the city of New York, in the United States of Amer- 
ica. Of all the good ships afloat, mine was the good steamship 
Russia, Captain Cook, Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. 
What more could I wish for? 

I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage. My 
salad-days, when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being gone 
with better things (and no worse), no coming event cast its 
shadow before. 

I might, but a few moments previously, have imitated Sterne, 
and said, “ ‘ And yet, methinks, Eugeuius,’ — laying my forefin- 
ger wistfully oil his coat-sleeve thus, — ‘ and yet, methinks, Eu- 
genius, ’t is but sorry work to part with thee, for what fresh 
fields .... my dear Eugenius .... can be fresher than thou 
art, and in what pastures new shall I find Eliza — or call* her, 
Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie,’ ” — I say I might have done 
this ; but Eugenius was gone, and I had n’t done it. 

I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching 
the w'orking of the ship very slowly about, that she might head 
for England. It was high noon on a most brilliant day in April, 
and the beautiful bay was glorious and glowing. Full many a 
time, on shore there, had I seen the snow come down, down, 
down (itself like down), until it lay deep in all the ways of men, 
and particularly, as it seemed, in my way, for I had not gone dry- 
shod for many hours for months. Within two or three days last 
past had I watched the feathery fall setting in with the ardor of 
a new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts of a worn-out win- 


320 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ter, and permitting glimpses of a fresh young spring. But a 
bright sun and a clear sky had melted the snow in the great cru- 
cible of nature, and it had been poured out again that morning 
over sea and land, transformed into myriads of gold and silver 
sparkles. 

The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something of the old 
Mexican passion for flowers may have gradually passed into 
North America, where flowers are luxuriously grown and taste- 
fully combined in the richest profusion ; but, be that as it may, 
such gorgeous farewells in flowers had come on board, that the 
small oflicer’s cabin on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed over into 
the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other flowers that it could n’t 
hold made a garden of the unoccupied tables in the passengers’ 
saloon. These delicious scents of the shore, mingling with the 
fresh airs of the sea, made the atmosphere a dreamy, an enchant- 
ing one. And so, with the watch aloft setting all the sails, and 
with the screw below revolving at a mighty rate, and occasion- 
ally giving the ship an angry shake for resisting, I fell into my 
idlest ways and lost myself. 

As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some other 
entity, even more mysterious, was a matter I was far too lazy to 
look into. What did it signify to me if it were I — or to the 
more mysterious entity — if it were he ? Equally as to the re- 
membrances that drowsily floated by me, — or by him, — why 
ask when, or where, the things happened? Was it not enough 
that they befell at some time, somewhere ? 

There was that assisting at the church service on board another 
steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps on the pas- 
sage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear the ship’s bells go, as 
like church-bells as they could ; pleasant to see the watch off 
duty mustered, and come in ; best hats, best Guernseys, washed 
hands and faces, smoothed heads. But then arose a set of cir- 
cumstances so rampantly comical, that no check which the 
gravest intentions could put upon them would hold them in 
hand. Thus the scene. Some seventy passengers assembled at 
the saloon tables. Prayer-books on tables. Ship rolling heavily. 
Pause. No minister. Rumor has related that a modest young 
clergyman on board has responded to the captain’s request that 
he will officiate. Pause again, and very heavy rolling. 

Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong 
stewards skate in, supporting minister between them. General 
appearance as of somebody picked up, drunk and incapable, and 
inder conveyance to station-house. Stoppage, pause, and par- 
ticularly heavy rolling. Stewards watch their opportunity, and 
balance themselves, but cannot balance minister; who, struir- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLEK. 


321 


gling with a drooping head and a backward tendency, seems de- 
termined to return below, while they are as determined that 
he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon. Desk port- 
able, sliding away down a long table, and aiming itself at the 
breasts of various members of the congregation. Here the 
double doors, wliich have been carefully closed by other stew- 
ards, fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, seem- 
ingly with Pale Ale designs : who, seeking friend, says “ Joe ! ” 
Perceiving incongruity, says, “ Hullo ! Beg yer pardon ! ” and 
tumbles out again. All this time the congregation have been 
breaking up into sects, — as the manner of congregations often 
is, — each sect sliding away by itself, and all pounding the 
weakest sect which slid first into the corner. Utmost point 
of dissent soon attained in every corner, and violent rolling. 
Stewards at length make a dash ; conduct minister to the mast 
in the centre of the saloon, which he embraces with both arms ; 
skate out ; and leave him in that condition to arrange affairs 
with flock. 

There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read 
the service. It was quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the 
dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experiment of striking up 
a hymn. After it was given out, we all rose, but everybody 
left it to somebody else to begin. Silence resulting, the officer 
(no singer himself) rather reproachfully gave us the first line 
again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentleman, remarka- 
ble throughout the passage for his cheerful politeness, gave a 
little stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off a country 
dance), and blithely warbled us into a show of joining. At the 
end of the first verse we became, through these tactics, so much 
refreshed and encouraged, that none of us, howsoever unmelodi- 
ous, would submit to be left out of the second verse ; while as 
to the third we lifted up our voices in a sacred howl that left it 
doubtful whether we were the more boastful of the sentiments 
we united in professing, or of professing them with a most dis- 
cordant defiance of time and tune. 

“ Lord bless us,” thought I, when the fresh remembrance of 
these things made me laugh heartily, alone in the dead water- 
gurgling waste of the night, what time I was wedged into my berth 
by a wooden bar, or I must have rolled out of it, “ what errand 
was I then upon, and to what Abyssinian point had public 
events then marched ? No matter as to me. And as to them, 
if the wonderful popular rage for a plaything (utterly confound- 
ing in its inscrutable unreason) had not tlien lighted on a poor 
young savage boy, and a poor old screw of a horse, and hauled 
the first off by the hair of his princely head to ‘inspect ’ British 


.322 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


volunteers, and hauled the second off by the hair of his equine 
tail to the Crystal Palace, why so much the better for all of us 
outside Bedlam ! ” 

So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking myself 
would I like to show the grog distribution in “ the fiddle ” at 
noon to the Grand United Amalgamated Total Abstinence So- 
ciety. Yes, I think I should. I think it would do them good 
to smell the rum, under the circumstances. Over the grog, 
mixed in a bucket, presides the boatswain’s mate, small tin can 
in hand. Enter the crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up 
Brood of Giant Despair, in contradistinction to the Band of 
youthful angel Hope. Some in boots, some in leggings, some in 
tarpaulin overalls, some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very few 
in jackets, most with sou’wester hats, all with something rough 
and rugged round the throat ; all dripping salt-water where they 
stand ; all pelted by weather, besmeared with grease, and black- 
ened by the sooty rigging. 

Each man’s knife in his sheath in his girdle, loosened for din- 
ner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches 
the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin 
mug, to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses the con- 
tents into himself, and passes the empty chalice and passes on, 
so the second man, with an anticipatory wipe of his mouth 
on sleeve or neckerchief, bides his turn, and drinks and hands, 
and passes on. In whom, and in each as his turn approaches, 
beams a knowingly kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a sud- 
denly awakened tendency to be jocose with some shipmate. 
Nor do I even observe that the man in charge of the ship’s 
lamps, who in right of his office has a double allowance of 
poisoned chalices, seems thereby vastly degraded, even though 
he empties the chalices into himself, one after the other, much as 
if he were delivering their contents at some absorbent establish- 
ment in which he had no personal interest. But vastly com- 
forted I note them all to be, on deck presently, even to the cir- 
culation of a redder blood in their cold blue knuckles ; and 
when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and holding on 
for life among the beating sails, I cannot for my life see the 
justice of visiting on them — or on me — the drunken crimes 
of any number of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of Assizes. 

Abetting myself in my idle humor, I closed my eyes and 
recalled life on board of one of those mail packets, as I lay, 
part of that day, in the Bay of New York O ! The regular 
life began — mine always did, for I never got to sleep after- 
wards — with the rigging of the pump while it was yet dark, 
and washing down of the decks. Any enormous giant at a pro- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


523 


digioiis hydropathic establishment, conscientiously undergoing 
the Water Cure in all its departments, and extremely particular 
about cleaning his teeth, would make those noises. Swash, 
splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash, splash, bubble, tooth- 
brush, splash, splash, bubble, rub. Then the day would break, 
and, descending from my berth by a graceful ladder composed of 
half-opened drawers beneath it, I would reopen my outer dead- 
light and my inner sliding window (closed by a watchman dur- 
ing the Water Cure), and would look out at the long-rolling, 
lead-colored, white-topped waves over which the dawn, on a 
cold winter morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through 
which the ship fought her melancholy way at a terrific rate. 
And now, lying down again, awaiting the season for broiled 
ham and tea, I would be compelled to listen to the voice of con- 
science, — the Screw. 

It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of Stom- 
ach, but I called it in my fancy by the higher name. Because 
it seemed to me that we were all of us, all day long, endeavor- 
ing to stifle the Voice. Because it was under everybody’s pil- 
low, everybody’s plate, everybody’s camp-stool, everybody's 
book, everybody’s occupation. Because we pretended not to 
hear it, especially at meal-times, evening whist, and morning 
conversation on deck ; but it was always among us in an under 
monotone, not to be drowned in pea-soup, not to be shuffled 
with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to be knitted into 
any pattern, not to be walked away from. It was smoked in 
the weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail ; it was 
conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in 
their wrappers until the stars shone ; it waited at table with the 
stewards; nobody could put it out with the lights. It was con- 
sidered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the Voice of Con- 
science. It was not polite to mention it. One squally day an 
amiable gentleman in love gave much offence to a surrounding 
circle, including the object of his attachment, by saying of it, 
after it had goaded him over two easy-chairs and a s%light, 
“ Screw ! ” 

Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting moments, 
when bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there 
was “ hot pot ” in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we had had 
regularly every day was described in that official document by a 
new name, — under such excitements, one would almost believe 
it hushed. The ceremony of washing plates on deck, performed 
after every meal by a circle as of ringers of crockery triple- 
bob majors for a prize, would keep it down. Hauling the reel, 
taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four hours’ run, al 


S24 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


tering the ship’s time by the meridian, casting the waste food 
overboard, and attracting the eager gulls that followed in our 
wake ; these events would suppress it for a while. But the 
instant any break or pause took place in any such diversion, the 
Voice would be at it again, importuning us to the last extent. 
A newly married young pair, who walked the deck affection- 
ately some twenty miles per day, would, in the full flush of 
their exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and stand trem- 
bling, but otherwise immovable, under its reproaches. 

When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when 
the time approached for our retiring to our dens for the night. 
When the lighted candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer. 
When the deserted glasses with spoons in them grew more and 
more numerous. When waifs of toasted cheese and trays of 
sardines fried in batter slid languidly to and fro in the table- 
racks. When the man who always read had shut up his book 
and blown out his candle. When the man who always talked 
had ceased from troubling. When the man who was always 
medically reported as going to have delirium tremens had put it 
off till to-morrow. When the man who every night devoted 
himself to a midnight smoke on deck, two hours in length, and 
who every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards, was 
buttoning himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil. For 
then, as we fell off one by one, and, entering our several hutches, 
came into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor 
soap, the Voice would shake us to the centre. Woe to us when 
we sat down on our sofa, watching the swinging candle forever 
trying and retrying to stand upon its head, or our coat upon its 
peg imitating us as we appeared in our gymnastic days by sus- 
taining itself horizontally from the wall, in emulation of the 
lighter and more facile towels ! Then would the Voice espe- 
cially claim us for its prey, and rend us all to pieces. 

Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the Voice 
grows angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and under the 
pillow, under the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the 
ship and under the sea, seeming to arise from the foundations 
under the earth with every scoop of the great Atlantic, (and oh, 
why scoop so!) always the Voice. Vain to deny its existence 
in the night season ; impossible to be hard of hearing ; Screw, 
Screw, Screw. Sometimes it lifts out of the water, and revolves 
with a whir, like a ferocious firework, — except that it never 
expends itself, but is always ready to go oft* again ; sometimes 
it seems to be anguish and shivers ; sometimes it seems to be 
terrified by its last plunge, and has a fit which causes it to strug- 
gle, quiver, and for an instant to stop. And now the ship sets 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


325 


in rolling, as only ships so fiercely screwed through time and 
space, day and night, fair weather and foul, can roll. 

Did she ever take a roll before like that last ? Did she ever 
take a roll before like this worse one that is coming now ? Here 
is the partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee side. 
Are we ever coming up again together ? I think not ; the par- 
tition and I are so long about it that I really do believe we have 
overdone it this time. Heavens, what a scoop ! What a deep 
scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long scoop ! Will it ever 
end, and can we bear the heavy mass of water we have taken 
on board, and which has let loose all the table furniture in the 
officers’ mess, and has beaten open the door of the little pas- 
sage between the purser and me, and is swashing about, even 
there and even here ? The purser snores reassuringly, and, the 
ship’s bells striking, I hear the cheerful “ All ’s well ! ” of the 
watch musically given back the length of the deck, as the lately 
diving partition, now high in air, tries (unsoftened by what 
we have gone through together) to force me out of bed and 
berth. 

“ All ’s well ! ” Comforting to know, though surely all might 
be better. Put aside the rolling and the rush of water, and 
think of darting through such darkness with such velocity. 
Think of any other similar object coming in the opposite direc- 
tion ! 

Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving 
bodies out at sea, which may help accident to bring them into 
collision ? Thoughts, too, arise (the Voice never silent all the 
while, but marvellously suggestive) of the gulf below ; of the 
strange unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys over which 
we are passing ; of monstrous fish, midway ; of the ship’s sud- 
denly altering her course on her own account, and with a wild 
plunge settling down, and making that voyage, with a crew of 
dead discoverers. Now, too, one recalls an almost universal 
tendency on the part of passengers to stumble, at some time or 
other in the day, on the topic of a certain large steamer mak- 
ing this same run, which was lost at sea and never heard of 
more. Everybody has seemed under a spell, compelling ap- 
proach to the threshold of the grim subject, stoppage, discomfit- 
ure, and pretence of never having been near it. The boat- 
swain’s whistle sounds ! A change in the wind, hoarse orders 
issuing, and the watch very busy. Sails come crashing home 
overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto ; every man engaged 
appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times the average 
amount of stamping power in each. Gradually the noise slack- 
ens, the hoarse cries die away, the boatswain’s whistle softens 


826 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


into the soothing and contented notes which rather reluctantly 
admit that the job is done for the time, and the Voice sets in 
again. 

Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down hill, 
and swinging and swaying, until consciousness revives of atmos- 
pherical Windsor soap and bilge-water, and the Voice announces 
that the giant has come for the Water Cure again. 

Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that 
day, in the Bay of New York O ! Also, as we passed clear of 
the Narrows and got out to sea ; also, in many an idle hour at 
sea in sunny weather. At length the observations and computa- 
tions showed that we should make the coast of Ireland to-night. 
So I stood watch on deck all night to-night, to see how we made 
the coast of Ireland. 

Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent. Great 
way on the ship, and double lookout kept. Vigilant captain on 
the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the port side, vigi- 
lant second officer standing by the quartermaster at the compass, 
vigilant third officer posted at the stern rail with a lantern. No 
passengers on the quiet decks, but expectation everywhere never- 
theless. The two men at the wheel, very steady, very serious, 
and very prompt to answer orders. An order issued sharply 
now and then, and echoed back ; otherwise the night drags 
slowly, silently, and with no change. 

All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, a 
vague movement of relief from a long strain expresses itself in 
all hands ; the third officer’s lantern twinkles, and he fires a 
rocket, and another rocket. A sullen solitary light is pointed 
out to me in the blank sky yonder. A change is expected 
in the light, but none takes place. “ Give them two more 
rockets, Mr. Vigilant.” Two more, and a blue-light burnt. All 
eyes watch the light again. At last a little toy sky-rocket is 
flashed up from it, and, even as that small streak in the dark- 
ness dies away, we are telegraphed to Queenstown, Liverpool, 
and London, and back again under the ocean to America. 

Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going ashore 
at Queenstown, and up comes the Mail Agent in charge of the 
bags, and up come the men who are to carry the bags into 
the Mail Tender that will come off for them out of the harbor. 
Lamps and lanterns gleam here and there about the decks, and 
impeding bulks are knocked away with handspikes, and the 
port-side bulwark, barren but a moment ago, bursts into a crop 
of heads of seamen, stewards, and engineers. 

The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be alongside, 
begins to be left astern. More rockets, and, between us and the 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


327 


land, steams beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris, 
for New York, outward bound. We observe with complacency 
that the wind is dead against her (it being with us), and that 
she rolls and pitches. (The sickest passenger on board is the 
most delighted by this circumstance.) Time rushes by, as we 
rush on, and now we see the light in Queenstown Harbor, 
and now the lights of the Mail Tender coming out to us. 
What vagaries the Mail Tender performs on the way, in every 
point of the compass, especially in those where she has no busi- 
ness, and why she performs them. Heaven only knows ! At 
length she is seen plunging within a cable’s length of our port 
broadside, and is being roared at through our speaking-trumpets 
to do this thing, and not to do that, and to stand by the other, 
as if she were a very demented Tender indeed. Then, we 
slackening amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much-abused 
Tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readiness 
carry the bags aboard, and return for more, bending under their 
burdens, and looking just like the pasteboard figures of the 
Miller and his Men in the Theatre of our boyhood, and com- 
porting themselves almost as unsteadily. All the while the un- 
fortuuate Tender plunges high and low, and is roared at. Then 
the Queenstown passengers are put on board of her, with infinite 
plunging and roaring, and the Tender gets heaved up on the sea 
to that surprising extent that she looks within an ace of wash- 
ing aboard of us, high and dry. Roared at with contumely to 
the last, this wretched Tender is at length let go, with a final 
plunge of great ignominy, and falls spinning into our wake. 

The Voice of Conscience resumed its dominion as the day 
climbed up the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into port ; 
kept by us as we passed other lighthouses, and dangerous islands 
off the coast, where some of the officers, with whom I stood my 
watch, had gone ashore in sailing ships in fogs (and of which 
by that token they seemed to have quite an affectionate re- 
membrance), and past the Welsh coast, and past the Cheshire 
coast, and past everything and everywhere lying between our 
ship and her own special dock in the Mersey. Off which, at 
last, at nine of the clock, on a fair evening early in May, we 
stopped, and the Voice ceased. A very curious sensation, not 
unlike having my own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence ; 
and it was with a no less curious sensation that I went over the 
side of the good Cunard ship Russia (whom Prosperity attend 
through all her voyages ! ) and surveyed the outer hull of the 
gracious monster that the Voice had inhabited. So, perhaps, 
shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey the frame that held 
the busier Voice from which my vagrant fancy derived this 
similitude. 


328 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XXXI. 

A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 

It fell out on a day in this last autumn that I had to go down 
from London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour’s business, 
accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch. Let the place 
of seaside resort be, for the nonce, called Namelesston. 

I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleas- 
antly breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais 
Royal or the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the 
Elysian Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the 
open air on the Italian Boulevard towards the small hours after 
midnight. Bullfinch — an excellent man of business — had sum- 
moned me back across the Channel, to transact this said hour’s 
business at Namelesston, and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and 
I were in a railway carriage together on our way to Nameless- 
ton, each with his return ticket in his waistcoat-pocket. 

Says Bullfinch : “ I have a proposal to make. Let us dine 
at the Temeraire.” 

I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire ? In- 
asmuch as I had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire 
for many years. 

Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recommend- 
ing the Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine about 
it. He “ seemed to remember,” Bullfinch said, that he had 
dined well there. A plain dinner, but good. Certainly not 
like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch obviously became the 
prey of want of confidence), but of its kind very fair. 

I appealed to Bullfinch’s intimate knowledge of my wants 
and ways to decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased 
with any dinner, or — for the matter of that — with anything 
that was fair of its kind and really what it claimed to be. Bull- 
finch doing me the honor to respond in the affirmative, I agreed 
to ship myself as an Able Trencherman on board the Teme- 
raire. 

“ Now, our plan shall be this,” says Bullfinch, with his fore- 
finger at his nose. “ As soon as we get to Namelesston, we ’ll 
drive straight to the Temeraire, and order a little dinner in an 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


329 


hour. And as we shall not have more than enough time in 
which to dispose of it comfortably, what do you say to giving 
the house the best opportunities of serving it hot and quickly 
by dining in the coffee-room ? ” 

What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by 
nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green 
geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging con- 
siderations of time and cookery. 

In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire and 
alighted. A youth in livery received us on the doorstep. 
“ Looks well,” said Bullfinch, confidentially. And then aloud, 
“ Coffee-room ! ” 

The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted 
us to the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send 
the waiter at once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an 
hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter until, the 
waiter continuing to wait in some unknown and invisible sphere 
of action, we rang for the waiter; which ring produced the 
waiter, who announced himself as not the waiter who ought to 
wait upon us, and who did n’t wait a moment longer. 

So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodi- 
ously pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies were 
keeping the books of the Temeraire, apologetically explained 
that we wished to order a little dinner in an hour, and that we 
were debarred from the execution of our inoffensive purpose by 
consignment to solitude. 

Hereupon one of the young ladies rang a bell, which repro- 
duced — at the bar this time — the waiter who was not the 
waiter who ought to wait upon us ; that extraordinary man, 
whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people to say that 
he would n’t wait upon them, repeated his former protest with 
great indignation, and retired. 

Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to me, 
“ This won’t do,” when the waiter who ought to wait upon us 
left off keeping us waiting at last. “ Waiter,” said Bullfinch, 
piteously, “ we have been a long time waiting.” The waiter 
who ought to wait upon us laid the blame upon the waiter who 
ought not to wait upon us, and said it was all that waiter’s fault. 

We wish,” said Bullfinch, much depressed, “ to order a little 
dinner in an hour. What can we have? ” 

“ What would you like to have, gentlemen ? ” 

Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, 
and with a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which 
the waiter had given him, and which was a sort of general 
manuscript Index to any Cookery-Book you please, moved the 
previous question. 


330 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast 
duck. Agreed. At this table by this window. Punctually in 
an hour. 

I had been feigning to look out of this window ; but I had 
been taking note of the crumbs on all the tables, the dirty table- 
cloths, the stuffy, soupy, airless atmosphere, the stale leavings 
everywhere about, the deep gloom of the waiter who ought to 
wait upon us, and the stomach-ache with which a lonely 
traveller at a distant table in a corner was too evidently af- 
flicted. I now pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming circum- 
stance that this traveller had dined. We hurriedly debated 
whether, without infringement of good breeding, we could ask 
him to disclose if he had partaken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or 
roast duck? We decided that the thing could not be politely 
done, and that we had set our own stomachs on a cast, and they 
must stand the hazard of the die. 

I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true ; I am 
much of the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the 
hand ; I hold physiognomy to be infallible ; though all these 
sciences demand rare qualities in the student. But I also hold 
that there is no more certain index to personal character than 
the condition of a set of casters is to the character of any hotel. 
Knowing, and having often tested this theory of mine. Bullfinch 
resigned himself to the worst, when, laying aside any remaining 
veil of disguise, I held up before him in succession the cloudy 
oil and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the dirty salt, the 
obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy sauce in a flannel waist- 
coat of decomposition. 

We went out to transact our business. So inspiriting was 
the relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of Name- 
lesston from the heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee-room of 
the Temeraire, that hope began to revive within us. We began 
to consider that perhaps the lonely traveller had taken physic, or 
done something injudicious to bring his complaint on. Bull- 
finch remarked that he thought the waiter who ought to wait 
upon us had brightened a little when suggesting curry; and 
although I knew him to have been at that moment the express 
image of despair, I allowed myself to become elevated in spirits. 
As we walked by the softly lapping sea, all the notabilities of 
Namelesston, who are forever going up and down with the 
changelessness of the tides, passed to and fro in procession. 
Pretty girls on horseback, and with detested riding-masters ; 
pretty girls on foot ; mature ladies in hats, — spectacled, strong- 
minded, and glaring at the opposite or weaker sex. The Stock 
Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem was strongly 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


831 


represented, the bores of the prosier London clubs were 
strongly represented. Fortune-hunters of all denominations 
were there, from hirsute insolvency in a curricle to closely 
buttoned-up swindlery in doubtful boots, on the sharp lookout 
for any likely young gentleman disposed to play a game at 
billiards round the corner. Masters of languages, their lessons 
finished for the day, were going to their homes out of sight of 
the sea ; mistresses of accomplishments, carrying small port- 
folios, likewise tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils, 
two and two, went languidly along the beach surveying the face 
of the waters as if waiting for some Ark to come and take them 
off. Spectres of the George the Fourth days flitted unsteadily 
among the crowd, bearing the outward semblance of ancient 
dandies, of every one of whom it might be said, not that he had 
one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that he was steeped in 
grave to the summit of his high shirt-collar, and had nothing 
real about him but his bones. Alone stationary in the midst of 
all the movements, the Namelesston boatmen leaned against the 
railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked at the 
moored fishing-boats and at nothing. Such is the unchanging 
manner of life with this nursery of our hardy seamen, and very 
dry nurses they are, and always wanting something to drink. 
The only two nautical personages detached from the railing 
were the two fortunate possessors of the celebrated monstrous 
unknown barking fish, just caught (frequently just caught off 
Namelesston), who carried him about in a hamper, and pressed 
the scientific to look in at the lid. 

The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back to 
the Temeraire. Says Bullfinch then to the youth in livery, 
with boldness, ‘‘ Lavatory ! ” 

When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, which 
the youth in livery presented as the Institution sought, we had 
already whisked off our cravats and coats ; but finding ourselves 
in the presence of an evil smell, and no linen but two crumpled 
towels newly damp from the countenances of two somebody 
elses, we put on our cravats and coats again, and fled unwashed 
to the coffee-room. 

There, the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth 
our knives and forks and glasses on the cloth whose dirty ac- 
quaintance we had already had the pleasure of making, and 
whom we were pleased to recognize by the familiar expression 
of its stains. And now there occurred the truly surprising 
phenomenon that the waiter who ought not to wait upon us 
swooped down upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and vanishe*! 
with the same. 


332 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Bullfinch with distracted eyes was following this unaccount- 
able figure “ out at the portal/’ like the Ghost in Hamlet, when 
the waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled against it, carry- 
ing a tureen. 

“ Waiter ! ” said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing his 
bill fiercely through his eye-glass. 

The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side table, and 
went to see what was amiss in this new direction. 

“ This is not right you know, waiter. Look here. Here ’s 
yesterday’s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again, 
two shillings. And what does this Sixpence mean ? ” 

So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter pro- 
tested that he did n’t know what anything meant. He wiped 
the perspiration from his clammy brow, and said it was impossi- 
ble to do it, — not particularizing what, — and the kitchen was 
so far off. 

“ Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered,” said Mr. Indig- 
nation Cocker : so to call him. 

The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, did n’t seem to like 
the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted as a new light 
upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant six pence. 

I tell you again,” said Mr. Indignation Cocker, “ here ’s 
yesterday’s sherry — can’t you see it? — one and eightpence, 
and here we are again, two shillings. What do you make of 
one and eightpence and two shillings ? ” 

Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence and 
two shillings, the waiter went out to try if anybody else could ; 
merely casting a helpless backward glance at Bullfinch, in 
acknowledgment of his pathetic entreaties for our soup-tureen. 
After a pause, during which Mr. Indignation Cocker read a 
newspaper, and coughed defiant coughs. Bullfinch rose to get 
the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and brought it : drop- 
ping Mr. Indignation Cocker’s altered bill on Mr. Indignation 
Cocker’s table as he came along. 

‘Ut’s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,” murmured the 
waiter ; “ and the kitchen is so far oft” 

“Well. You don’t keep the house; it’s not your fault, we 
suppose. Bring some sherry.” 

“Waiter!” From Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new and 
burning sense of injury upon him. 

The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped short, 
and came back to see what was wrong now. 

“ Will you look here ? This is worse than before. Do you 
understand? Here’s yesterday’s sherry one and eightpence 
and here we are again two shillings. And what the devil doe*'. 
Ninepence mean ? ” 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


333 


This new portent utterly confounded the waiter. Jtie wrung 
his napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling. 

“ Waiter, fetch that sherry,” says Bullfinch, in open wrath 
and revolt. 

“ I want to know,” persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, “ the 
meaning of Ninepence. I want to know the meaning of sherry 
one and eightpence yesterday, and of here we are again two 
shillings. Send somebody.” 

The distracted waiter got out of the room under pretext of 
sending somebody, and by that means got our wine. But the 
instant he appeared with our decanter, Mr. Indignation Cocker 
descended on him again. 

« Waiter ! ” 

“ You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, 
waiter,” says Bullfinch, sternly. 

“I am very sorry, but it’s quite impossible to do it, gentle- 
men,” pleaded the waiter ; “ and the kitchen ” — ► 

“ Waiter ! ” said Mr. Indignation Cocker. “ Is,” resumed the 
waiter, “ so far off, that ” — 

“Waiter!” persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, “send some- 
body.” 

We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out to 
hang himself, and we were much relieved by his fetching some- 
body, — in gracefully flowing skirts and with a waist, — who 
very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker’s business. 

“ Oh ! ” said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly quenched 
by this apparition. “ I wished to ask about this bill of mine, 
because it appears to me that there’s a little mistake here. 
Let me show you. Here ’s yesterday’s sherry one and eight- 
pence, and here we are again two shillings. And how do you 
explain Ninepence ? ” 

However, it was explained in tones too soft to be overheard. 
Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than “Ah-h-h! 
Indeed ! Thank you ! Yes,” and shortly afterwards went out, 
a milder man. 

The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time 
suffered severely ; drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping 
hot brandy and water with grated ginger in it. When we 
tasted our (very) mock-turtle soup, and were instantly seized 
with symptoms of some disorder simulating apoplexy, and oc- 
casioned by the surcharge of the nose and brain with lukewarm 
dish-water holding in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments, 
and (say) seventy-five per cent of miscellaneous kitchen stuff 
rolled into balls, we were inclined to trace his disorder to that 
source. On the other hand, there was a silent anguish upon 


834 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


him too strongly resembling the results established within our- 
selves by the sherry, to be discarded from alarmed considera- 
tion. Again : we observed him, with terror, to be much over- 
come by our sole’s being aired in a temporary retreat close to 
him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived) to see his 
friends. And when the curry made its appearance he suddenly 
retired in great disorder. 

In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as con- 
tradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only seven shil- 
lings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch and I agreed unani- 
mously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed, ill-cooked, nasty 
little dinner could be got for the money anywhere else under 
the sun. With that comfort to our backs, we turned them on 
the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire, and resolved 
(in the Scottish dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby Teme- 
raire. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


335 


XXXIL 

MR. BARLOW. 

A GREAT reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, it 
seems to me as though I had been born under the superintendence 
of the estimable but terrific gentleman whose name stands at the 
head of my present refiections. The instructive monomaniac, 
Mr. Barlow, will be remembered as the tutor of Master , Harry 
Sandford and Master Tommy Merton. He knew everything, 
and didactically improved all sorts of occasions, from the con- 
sumption of a plate of cherries to the contemplation of a 
starlight night. What youth came to without Mr. Barlow was 
displayed, in the history of Sandford and Merton, by the ex- 
ample of a certain awful Master Mash. This young wretch 
wore buckles and powder, conducted himself with insupportable 
levity at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single- 
handed (in which I think him less reprehensible, as remotely 
reflecting my own character), and was a frightful instance of the 
enervating effects of luxury upon the human race. 

Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to 
posterity as childhood’s first experience of a Bore ! Immortal 
Mr. Barlow, boring his way through the verdant freshness of 
ages ! 

My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many 
counts. I will proceed to set forth a few of the injuries he has 
done me. 

In the first place, he never made or took a joke. This in- 
sensibility on Mr. Barlow’s part not only cast its own gloom 
over my boyhood, but blighted even the sixpenny jest-books of 
the time. For, groaning under a moral spell constraining me to 
refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I could not choose but ask my- 
self in a whisper when tickled by a printed jest, “ What would 
he think of it? What would he see in it?” The point of the 
jest immediately became a sting, and stung my conscience. For, 
my mind’s eye saw him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its 
shelf some dreary Greek book and translating at full length 
what some dismal sage said (and touched up afterwards, per- 


336 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


haps, for publication), when he banished some unlucky joker 
from Athens. 

The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions of 
my young life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability of the 
man to my favorite fancies and amusements, is the thing for 
which I hate him most. What right had he to bore his way 
into my Arabian Nights ? Yet he did. He was always hint- 
ing doubts of the veracity of Sindbad the Sailor. If he could 
have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I know he would have 
trimmed it, and lighted it, and delivered a lecture over it on the 
qualities of sperm oil, with a glance at the whale-fisheries. He 
would so soon have found out — on mechanical principles — the 
peg in the neck of the Enchanted Horse, and would have 
turned it the right way in so workmanlike a manner, that the 
horse could never have got any height into the air, and the 
story could n’t have been. He would have proved, by map and 
compass, that there was no such kingdom as the delightful 
kingdom of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary. He would 
have caused that hypocritical young prig Harry to make an ex- 
periment, — with the aid of a temporary building in the garden 
and a dummy, — demonstrating that you could n’t let a choked 
Hunchback down an Eastern chimney with a cord, and leave 
him upright on the hearth to terrify the Sultan’s purveyor. 

The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropolitan 
pantomime I remember were alloyed by Mr. Barlow. Click 
click, thing thing, bang bang, weedle weedle weedle. Bang ! I 
recall the chilling air that passed across my frame and cooled 
my hot delight, as the thought occurred to me, “ This would 
never do for Mr. Barlow ! ” After the curtain drew up, dread- 
ful doubts of Mr. Barlow’s considering the costumes of the 
Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently opaque, obtruded 
themselves on my enjoyment. In the Clown I perceived two 
persons ; one, a fascinating unaccountable creature of a hectic 
complexion, joyous in spirits though feeble in intellect, with ' 
flashes of brilliancy: the other a pupil for Mr. Barlow. I 
thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly rise early in the morn- 
ing, and butter the pavement for him^ and, when he had brought 
him down, would look severely out of his study window and ask 
him how he enjoyed the fun. 

I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the 
house, and singe him with the whole collection, to bring him 
better acquainted with the properties of incandescent iron, on 
which he (Barlow) would fully expatiate. I pictured Mr. 
Barlow’s instituting a comparison between the clown’s conduct 
at his studies, — drinking up the ink, licking his copy-book, 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


337 


and using his head for blotting-paper, — and that of the already 
mentioned young Prig of Prigs, Harry, sitting at the Barlovian 
feet, sneakingly pretending to be in a rapture of useful knowl- 
edge. I thought how soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the 
clown’s hair down, instead of letting it stand erect in three tall 
tufts ; and how, after a couple of years or so with Mr. Barlow, 
he would keep his legs close together when he walked, and would 
take his hands out of his big loose pockets, and would n’t have 
a jump left in him. 

That 1 am particularly ignorant what most things in the 
universe are made of, and how they are made, is another of 
my charges against Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon me 
of developing into a Harry, and with the further dread upon 
me of being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by bringing down 
upon myself a cold shower-bath of explanations and experi- 
ments, I forebore enlightenment in my youth, and became, as 
they say in melodramas, “ the wreck you now behold.” That 
I consorted with idlers and dunces, is another of the melancholy 
facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible. That Pragmat- 
ical Prig, Harry, became so detestable in my sight, that he be- 
ing reported studious in the South, I would have fled idle to the 
extremest North. Better to learn misconduct from a Mastei 
Mash than science and statistics from a Sandford ! So I took 
the path which, but for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden. 
Thought I with a shudder, “ Mr. Barlow is a bore, with an im- 
mense constructive power of making bores. His prize specimen 
is a bore. He seeks to make a bore of me. That Knowledge 
is Power I am not prepared to gainsay ; but, with Mr. Barlow, 
Knowledge is Power to bore.” Therefore I took refuge in the 
Caves of Ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since, and which 
are still my private address. 

But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. 
Barlow is, that he still walks the earth in various disguises seek- 
ing to make a Tommy of me, even in my maturity. Irrepres- 
sible instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pit- 
falls, and lies hiding at the bottom to burst out upon me when 
I least expect him. 

A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice. 

Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the Moving 
Panorama trade, and having on various occasions identified him 
in the dark with a long wand in his hand, holding forth in his 
old way (made more appalling in this connection, by his some- 
times cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle’s own Dead-Sea Fruit in 
mistake for a joke), I systematically shun pictorial entertain- 
ment on rollers. Similarly, I should demand responsible bail 
22 


838 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


and guaranty against the appearance of Mr. Barlow, before com- 
mitting myself to attendance at any assemblage of my fellow- 
creatures where a bottle of water and a note-book were conspic- 
uous objects. For in either of those associations, I should ex- 
pressly expect him. But such is the designing nature of the 
man that he steals in where no reasoning precaution or prevision 
could expect him. As in the following case : — 

Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town. In this 
country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, were 
announced to appear in the Town Hall, for the general delecta- 
tion, this last Christmas week. Knowing Mr. Barlow to be 
unconnected with the Mississippi, though holding republican 
opinions, and deeming myself secure, I took a stall. My object 
was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses in what the bills 
described as their “ National Ballads, Plantation Break-Downs, 
Nigger Part-Songs, Choice Conundrums, Sparkling Repartees, 
&c.” I found the nine dressed alike, in the black coat and 
trousers, white waistcoat, very large shirt-front, very large shirt- 
collar, and very large white tie and wristbands, which constitute 
the dress of the mass of the African race, and which has been 
observed by travellers to prevail over a vast number of degrees 
of latitude. All the nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had 
very red lips. At the extremities of the curve they formed 
seated in their chairs were the performers on the Tambourine 
and Bones. The centre Momus, a black of melancholy aspect 
(who inspired me with a vague uneasiness for which I could not 
then account), performed on a Mississippi instrument closely re- 
sembling what was once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy. The 
Momuses on either side of him had each another instrument 
peculiar to the Father of Waters, which may be likened to a 
stringed weather-glass held upside down. There were likewise 
a little flute, and a violin. All went well for a while, and we 
had had several sparkling repartees exchanged between the per- 
formers on the tambourine and bones, when the black of melan- 
choly aspect, turning to the latter, and addressing him in a deep 
and improving voice as “ Bones, sir,” delivered certain grave re- 
marks to him concerning the juveniles present, and the season of 
the year ; whereon I perceived that I was in the presence of JNIr. 
Barlow, — corked ! 

Another night — and this was in London — I attended the 
representation of a little comedy. As the characters were life- 
like (and consequently not improving), and as they went upon 
their several ways and designs without personally addressing 
themselves to me, I felt rather confident of coming through it 
without being regarded as Tommy; the more so, as we were 


THE UNCOIklMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


339 


clearly getting close to the end. But I deceived myself. All 
of a sudden, and apropos of nothing, everybody concerned came 
to a check and halt, advanced to the footlights in a general rally 
to take dead aim at me, and brought me down with a moral 
homily in which I detected the dread hand of Barlow. 

Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, that 
on the very next night after that, I was again entrapped, where 
no vestige of a springe could have been apprehended by the 
timidest. It was a burlesque that I saw performed ; an uncom- 
promising burlesque, where everybody concerned, but especially 
the ladies, carried on at a very considerable rate, indeed. Most 
prominent and active among the corps of performers was what 
I took to be (and she really gave me very fair opportunities of 
coming to a right conclusion) a young lady, of a pretty figure. 
She was dressed as a picturesque young gentleman, whose pan- 
taloons had been cut off in their infancy, and she had very neat 
knees, and very neat satin boots. Immediately after singing a 
slang song and dancing a slang dance, this engaging figure ap- 
proached the fatal lamps, and, bending over them, delivered in 
a thrilling voice a random Eulogium on, and Exhortation to 
pursue, the virtues. “ Great Heaven ! ” was my exclamation. 
“ Barlow ! ” 

There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow perpetually 
insists on my sustaining the character of Tommy, which is more 
unendurable yet on account of its extreme aggressiveness. For 
the purposes of a review or newspaper, he will get up an abstruse 
subject with infinite pains, will Barlow, utterly regardless of the 
price of midnight oil, and indeed, of everything else, save cram- 
ming himself to the eyes. 

But mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, he 
is not contented with having rammed it home and discharged it 
upon me. Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always 
in possession of it, and made nothing of it, — that he imbibed it 
with his mother’s milk, — and that I, the wretched Tommy, am 
most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same. I ask, 
why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this ex- 
tent ? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, 
a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in 
me not to have at my fingers’ end to-day ! And yet Mr. Barlow 
systematically carries it over me with a high hand, and will taunt- 
ingly ask me in his articles whether it is possible that I am not 
aware that every school-boy knows that the fourteenth turning 
on the left in the steppes of Russia will conduct to such-and-such 
a wandering tribe ? With other disparaging questions of like 
nature. So, when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to any journal 


340 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


as a volunteer correspondent (which I frequently find him 
doing), he will previously have gotten somebody to tell him 
some tremendous technicality, and will write in the coolest man- 
ner. “ Now, sir, I may assume that every reader of your col- 
umns, possessing average information and intelligence, knows as 
well as I do that ” — say that the draught from the touch-hole 
of a cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion in the 
nicest fractions to the draught from the muzzle ; or some equally 
familiar little fact. But whatever it is, be certain that it always 
tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his 
enforced and enslaved pupil. 

Mr. Barlow’s knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be so 
profound, that my own knowledge of them becomes as nothing. 
Mr. Barlow (disguised and bearing a feigned name, but detected 
by me) has occasionally taught me, in a sonorous voice, from 
end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles that I took the liberty 
of teaching him five-and-twenty years ago. My closing article 
of impeachment against Mr. Barlow is, that he goes out to 
breakfast, goes out to dinner, goes out everywhere high and 
low, and that he will preach to me and that I can’t get rid 
of him. He makes of me a Promethean Tommy, bound ; and 
he is the vulture that gorges itself upon the liver of my unin- 
structed mind. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


341 


XXXIIL 

ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 

It is one of my fancies that even my idlest walk must always 
have its appointed destination. I set myself a task before I 
leave my lodging in Covent Garden on a street expedition, 
and should no more think of altering my route by the way, or 
turning back and leaving a part of it unachieved, than I should 
think of fraudulently violating an agreement entered into with 
somebody else. The other day, finding myself under this kind 
of obligation to proceed to Limehouse, 1 started punctually at 
noon, in compliance with the terms of the contract with myself 
to which my good faith was pledged. 

On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as my 
Beat, and myself as a higher sort of Police Constable doing 
duty on the same. There is many a ruffian in the streets whom 
1 mentally collar and clear out of them, who would see mighty 
little of London, I can tell him, if I could deal with him phys- 
ically. 

Issuing forth upon this very Beat, and following with my 
eyes three hulking garroters on their way home, — which home 
I could confidently swear to be within so many yards of Drury 
Lane, in such a narrowed and restricted direction (though they 
live in their lodging quite as undisturbed as I in mine), — I 
went on duty with a consideration which I respectfully offer to 
the new Chief Commissioner, in whom I thoroughly confide as 
a tried and efficient public servant. How often (thought I) 
have I been forced to swallow, in Police reports, the intolerable 
stereotyped pill of nonsense how that the Police Constable in- 
formed the worthy magistrate how that the associates of the 
Prisoner did at that present speaking dwell in a street or court 
which no man dared go down, and how that the worthy magis- 
trate had heard of the dark reputation of such street or court, 
and how that our readers would doubtless remember that it was 
always the same street or court which was thus edifyingly dis- 
coursed about, say once a fortnight. 

Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a circu- 
lar to every Division of Police employed in London, requiring 


342 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


instantly tlie names in all districts of all such much-pufFed streets 
or courts which no man durst go down ; and suppose that in 
such circular he gave plain warning : “ If those places really 
exist, they are a proof of Police inefficiency which I mean to 
punish ; and if they do not exist, but are a conventional fiction, 
then they are a proof of lazy tacit Police connivance with pro- 
fessional crime, which I also mean to punish,” — what then? 
Fiction or realities, could they survive the touchstone of this 
atom of common sense ? To tell us in open court, until it has 
become as trite a feature of news as the great gooseberry, that 
a costly Police system such as was never before heard of, has 
left ill London, in the days of steam and gas and photographs 
of thieves and electric telegraphs, the sanctuaries and stews of 
the Stuarts ! Why, a parity of practice, in all departments, 
would bring back the Plague in two summers, and the Druids 
in a century ! 

Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I over- 
turned a wretched little creature, who, clutching at the rags of 
a pair of trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair 
with the other, pattered with bare feet over the muddy stones. 
I stopped to raise and succor this poor weeping wretch, and fifty 
like it, but of both sexes, were about me in a moment, begging, 
tumbling, fighting, clamoring, yelling, shivering in their naked- 
ness and hunger. The piece of money I had put into the claw 
of the child I had overturned was clawed out of it, and was 
again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again out of that, 
and soon I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle in 
the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might 
be. In raising the child, I had drawn it aside out of the main 
thoroughfare, and this took place among some wooden hoardings 
and barriers and ruins of demolished buildings, hard by Temple 
Bar. 

Unexpectedly from among them emerged a genuine Police 
Constable, before whom the dreadful brood dispersed in various 
directions, he making feints and darts in this direction and that, 
and catching nothing. When all were frightened away, he took 
off his hat, pulled out a handkerchief from it, wiped his heated 
brow, and restored the handkerchief and hat to their places, 
with the air of a man who had discharged a great moral duty, — 
as indeed he had, in doing what was set down for him. I looked 
at him, and I looked about at the disorderly traces in the mud, 
and I thought of the drops of rain and the footprints of an ex- 
tinct creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that geologists have 
identified on the face of a cliff ; and this speculation came over 
me : If this mud could petrify at this moment, and could lie 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


343 


concealed here for ten thousand years, I wonder whether the 
race of men then to be our successors on the earth could, from 
these or any marks, by the utmost force of the human intellect, 
unassisted by tradition, deduce such an astounding inference as 
the existence of a polished state of society that bore with the 
public savagery of neglected children in the streets of its capi- 
tal city, and was proud of its power by sea and land, and never 
used its power to seize and save them ! 

After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up it 
towards Newgate, I found that the prison had an inconsistent 
look. There seemed to be some unlucky inconsistency in the 
atmosphere that day, for though the proportions of St. Paul’s 
Cathedral are very beautiful, it had an air of being somewhat 
out of drawing, in my eyes. I felt as though the cross were too 
high up, and perched upon the intervening golden ball too far 
away. 

Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old Bailey, 
— fire and fagot, condemned Hold, public hanging, whipping 
through the city at the cart-tail, pillory, branding-iron, and other 
beautiful ancestral landmarks, which rude hands have rooted up, 
without bringing the stars quite down upon us as yet, — and 
went my way upon my Beat, noting how oddly characteristic 
neighborhoods are divided one from another, hereabout, as 
though by an invisible line across the way. Here, shall cease 
the bankers and the money-changera ; here, shall begin the ship- 
ping interest and the nautical-instrument shops ; here, shall fol- 
low a scarcely perceptible flavoring of groceries and drugs ; here 
shall come a strong infusion of butchers ; now, small hosiers 
shall be in the ascendant; henceforth, everything exposed for 
sale shall have its ticketed price attached. All this as if spe- 
cially ordered and appointed. 

A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than suf- 
ficed to cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canongate, 
which the Debtors in Holyrood Sanctuary were wont to relieve 
their minds by skipping over, as Scott relates, and standing in 
delightful daring of Catchpoles on the free side, — a single 
stride, and everything is entirely changed in grain and char- 
acter. West of the stride, a table, or a chest of drawers on 
sale shall be of mahogany and French-polished; East of the 
stride, it shall be of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit re- 
sembling lip-salve. West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun 
shall be compact and self-contained ; East of the stride, it shall 
be of a sprawling and splay-footed character, as seeking to 
make more of itself for the money. My Beat lying round by 
Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent Sugar Refineries, — great 


344 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being 
nearly related to the Dock- Warehouses at Liverpool, — I 
turned olF to my right, and, passing round the awkward cor- 
ner on my left, came suddenly on an apparition familiar to 
London streets afar off. 

What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the 
woman who has fallen forward, double, through some affection 
of the spine, and whose head has of late taken a turn to one 
side, so that it now droops over the back of one of her arms at 
about the wrist? Who does not know her staff, and her shawl, 
and her basket, as she gropes her way along, capable of seeing 
nothing but the pavement, never begging, never stopping, for- 
ever going somewhere on no business? How does she live, 
whence does she come, whither does she go, and why ? I mind 
the time when her yellow arms were nought but bone and 
parchment. Slight changes steal over her, for there is a shad- 
owy suggestion of human skin on them now. The Strand may 
be taken as the central point about which she revolves in a half- 
mile orbit. How comes she so far East as this ? And coming 
back too ! Having been how much farther ? She is a rare 
spectacle in this neighborhood. I receive intelligent informa- 
tion to this effect from a dog, — a lop-sided mongrel with a fool- 
ish tail, plodding along with his tail up, and his ears pricked, 
and displaying an amiable interest in the ways of his fellow- 
men, — if I may be allowed the expression. After pausing at 
a porkshop, he is jogging Eastward like myself, with a benevo- 
lent countenance and a watery mouth, as though musing on the 
many excellences of pork, when he beholds this doubled-up 
bundle approaching. He is not so much astonished at the bun- 
dle (though amazed by that), as at the circumstance that it has 
within itself the means of locomotion. He stops, pricks his 
ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters a short, low 
growl, and glistens at the nose, — as I conceive with terror. 
The bundle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail, and is 
about to fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not be- 
coming in a dog, he turns, and once more faces the advancing 
heap of clothes. After much hesitation it occurs to him that 
there may be a face in it somewhere. Desperately resolving to 
undertake the adventure and pursue the inquiry, he goes slowly 
up to the bundle, goes slowly round it, and coming at length 
upon the human countenance down there where never human 
countenance should be, gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the 
East India Docks. 

Being now in the Commercial road district of my Beat, and 
bethinking myself that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


346 


pace that I may turn out of the road at that point, and set how 
my small Eastern Star is shining. 

The Children’s Hospital, to which I gave that name, is ici full 
force. All its beds occupied. There is a new face on the bed 
where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is now at 
rest forever. Much kind sympathy has been here, since my 
former visit, and it is good to see the walls profusely garnished 
with dolls. I wonder what Poodles may think of them, as they 
stretch out their arms above the beds, and stare, and display 
their splendid dresses. Poodles has a greater interest in the 
patients. I find him making the round of the beds, like a 
house-surgeon, attended by another dog, — a friend, - - who 
appears to trot about with him in the character of his pupil 
dresser. Poodles is anxious to make me known to a pretty 
little girl, looking wonderfully healthy, who has had a leg taken 
off for cancer of the knee. A difficult operation. Poodles inti- 
mates, wagging his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly sue 
cessful, as you see, dear sir ! The patient, patting Poodles, adds 
with a smile : “ The leg was so much trouble to me, that I am 
glad it ’s gone.” I never saw anything in doggery finer than 
the deportment of Poodles, when another little girl opens her 
mouth to show a peculiar enlargement of the tongue. Poodles 
(at that time on a table, to be on a level with the occasion) 
looks at the tongue (with his own sympathetically out) so very 
gravely and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand on 
my waistcoat pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper. 

On my Beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its ter- 
mination, I found myself near to certain “ Lead Mills.” Struck 
by the name, which was fresh in my memory, and finding, on 
inquiry, that these same Lead Mills were identical with those 
same Lead Mills of which I made mention when I first visited 
the East London Children s Hospital and its neighborhood, as 
Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved to have a look at them. 

Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and 
partners with their father in the concern, and who testified 
every desire to show their works to me freely, I went over the 
Lead Mills. The purport of such works is the conversion of 
Pig Lead into White Lead. This conversion is brought about 
by the slow and gradual efiecting of certain successive chemical 
changes in the lead itself. The processes are picturesque and 
interesting, — the most so, being the burying of the lead, at a 
certain stage of preparation, in pots, each pot containing a cer- 
tain quantity of acid besides, and all the pots being buried in 
vast numbers, in layers, under tan, for some ten weeks. 

Hopping up ladders and across planks and on elevated 


346 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


perches until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a Bird 
or a Bricklayer, I became conscious of standing on nothing 
particular, looking down into one of a series of large cocklofts, 
with the outer day peeping in through the chinks in the tiled 
roof above. A number of women were ascending to, and de- 
scending from, this cockloft, each carrying on the upward jour- 
ney a pot of prepared lead and acid, for deposition under the 
smoking tan. When one layer of pots was completely filled, 
it was carefully covered in with planks, and those were care- 
fully covered with tan again, and then another layer of pots was 
begun above; sufficient means of ventilation being preserved 
through wooden tubes. Going down into the cockloft then fill- 
ing, I found the heat of the tan to be surprisingly great, and 
also the odor of the lead and acid to be not absolutely exquis- 
ite, though I believe not noxious at that stage. In other cock- 
lofts where the pots were being exhumed, the heat of the steam- 
ing tan was much greater, and the smell was penetrating and 
peculiar. There were cocklofts in all stages ; full and empty, 
half filled and half emptied ; strong, active women were clam- 
bering about them busily ; and the whole thing had rather the 
air of the upper part of the house of some immensely rich old 
Turk, whose faithful Seraglio were hiding his money because 
the Sultan or the Pasha was coming. 

As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the instance 
of this White Lead, processes of stirring, separating, washing, 
grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed. Some of these are un- 
questionably inimical to health, the danger arising from inhala- 
tion of particles of lead, or from contact between the lead and 
the touch, or both. Against these dangers, I found good respi- 
rators provided (simply made of flannel and muslin, so as to be 
inexpensively renewed, and in some instances washed with 
scented soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns. Every- 
where, there was as much fresh air as windows, well placed and 
opened, could possibly admit. And it was explained that the 
precaution of frequently changing the women employed in the 
worst parts of the work (a precaution origii\ating in their own 
experience or apprehension of its ill effects) was found salutary. 
They had a mysterious and singular appearance with the mouth 
and nose covered, and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the 
simile of the old Turk. and the Seraglio all the better for the 
disguise. 

At last this vexed white lead having been buried and resus- 
citated, and heated, and cooled, and stirred, and separated, and 
washed, and ground and rolled, and pressed, is subjected to the 
action of intense fiery heat. A row of women, dressed as above 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


347 


described, stood, let us say, in a large stone bake-house, passing 
on the baking-dishes as they were given out by the cooks, from 
hand to hand, into the ovens. The oven or stove, cold as yet, 
looked as high as an ordinary house, and was full of men and 
women on temporary footholds, briskly passing up and stowing 
away the dishes. The door of another oven or stove, about to be 
cooled and emptied was opened from above, for the Uncommer- 
cial countenance to peer down into. The Uncommercial counte- 
nance withdrew itself, with expedition and a sense of suffocation 
from the dull-glowing heat and the overpowering smell. On the 
whole, perhaps the going into these stoves to work, when they 
are freshly opened, may be the worst part of the occupation. 

But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these 
lead mills honestly and sedulously try to reduce the dangers of 
the occupation to the lowest point. 

A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there 
might have been more towels), and a room in which they hang 
their clothes, and take their meals, and where they have a good 
fire-range and fire, and a female attendant to help them, and to 
watch that they do not neglect the cleansing of their hands be- 
fore touching their food. An experienced medical attendant is 
provided for them, and any premonitory symptoms of lead-poi- 
souing are carefully treated. Their teapots and such things 
were set out on tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I 
saw their room, and it had a homely look. It is found that they 
bear the work much better than men ; some few of them have 
been at it for years, and the great majority of those I observed 
were strong and active. On the other hand, it should be re- 
membered that most of them are very capricious and irregular 
in their attendance. 

American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before 
very long White Lead may be made entirely by machinery. 
The sooner, the better. In the mean time, I parted from my 
two frank conductors over the mills, by telling them that they 
had nothing there to be concealed, and nothing to be blamed for. 
As to the rest, the philosophy of the matter of lead-poisoning 
and work-people seems to me to have been pretty fairly summed 
up by the Irish woman whom I quoted in my former paper : 
“ Some of them gits lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gits 
lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver, and ’t is all 
according to the constitooshun, sur, and some constitooshuns is 
strong and some is weak.” 

Retracing my footsteps over my Beat, I went off duty. 


S48 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XXXIV. 

A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE. 

Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a 
pursuit (no matter what), which could be transacted by myself 
alone ; in which I could have no help ; which imposed a con- 
stant strain on the attention, memory, observation, and physical 
powers and which involved an almost fabulous amount of change 
of place and rapid railway travelling. I had followed this pur- 
suit through an exceptionally trying winter in an always trying 
climate, and had resumed it in England after but a brief repose. 
Thus it came to be prolonged until, at length — and, as it seemed, 
all of a sudden, — it so wore me out that I could not rely, with 
my usual cheerful confidence, upon myself to achieve the con- 
stantly recurring task, and began to feel (for the first time in my 
life) giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and sight and 
tread and touch, and dull of spirit. The medical advice I sought 
within a few hours was given in two w'ords : “ Instant rest.” 
Being accustomed to observe myself as curiously as if I were 
another man, and knowing the advice to meet my only need, I 
instantly halted in the pursuit of which I speak, and rested. 

My intention was to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the 
book of my life, in which nothing should be written from with- 
out for a brief season of a few weeks. But some very singular 
experiences recorded themselves on this same fly-leaf, and I am 
going to relate them literally. I repeat the word ; literally. 

My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence 
between my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle’s 
as I find it recorded in a work of fiction called Little Dorr it. 
To be sure, Mr. Merdle was a swindler, forger, and thief, and 
my calling had been of a less harmful (and less remunerative) 
nature ; but it was all one for that. 

Here is Mr. Merdle’s case : — 

“ At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were 
known, and of several brand-new maladies invented with the 
speed of Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He had con- 
cealed a dropsy from infancy, he had inherited a large estate of 
water on the chest from his grandfather, he had had an opera- 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


849 


tion performed on him every morning of his life for eighteen 
years, he had been subject to the explosion of important veins 
in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had had something 
the matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter with 
his heart, he had had something the matter with his brain. Five 
hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed 
on the whole subject, believed before they had done breakfast 
that they privately and personally knew Physician to have said 
to Mr. Merdle, “ You must expect to go out, some day, like the 
snuff of a candle ; ” and that they knew Mr. Merdle to have 
said to Physician, “ A man can die but once.” By about eleven 
o’clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the brain 
became the favorite theory against the field ; and by twelve the 
something had been distinctly ascertained to be “ Pressure.” 

“ Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and 
seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might have 
lasted all day but for Bar’s having taken the real state of the 
case into Court at half past nine. Pressure, however, so far 
from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater favor- 
ite than ever. There was a general moralizing upon Pressure, 
in every street. All the people who had tried to make money 
and had not been able to do it, said. There you were ! You no 
sooner began to devote yourself to the pursuit of wealth, than 
you got Pressure. The idle people improved the occasion in a 
similar manner. See, said they, what you brought yourself to 
by work, work, work ! You persisted in working, you overdid 
it. Pressure came on, and you were done for ! This considera- 
tion was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more so 
than among the young clerks and partners who had never been 
in the slightest danger of overdoing it. These, one and all, 
declared, quite piously, that they hoped they would never forget 
the warning as long as they lived, and that their conduct might 
be so regulated as to keep off Pressure, and preserve them, a 
comfort to their friends, for many years.” 

Just my case, — if I had only known it, — -when I was quietly 
basking in the sunshine in my Kentish meadow ! 

But while I so rested thankfully recovering every hour, I had 
experiences more odd than this. I had experiences of spiritual 
conceit, for which, as giving me a new warning against that 
curse of mankind, I shall always feel grateful to the supposition 
that I was too far gone to protest against playing sick lion to 
any stray donkey with an itching^ hoof. All sorts of people 
seemed to become vicariously religious at my expense. I re- 
ceived the most uncompromising warning that I was a Heathen ,* 
on the conclusive authority of a field preacher, who, like the most 


350 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


of his ignorant and vain and daring class, could not construct a 
tolerable sentence in his native tongue or pen a fair letter. This 
inspired individual called me to order roundly, and knew in the 
freest and easiest way where I was going to, and what would be- 
come of me if I failed to fashion myself on his bright example, 
and was on terms of blasphemous confidence with the Heavenly 
Host. He was in the secrets of my heart, and in the lowest 
soundings of my soul — he ! — and could read the depths of my 
nature better than his ABC, and could turn me inside out, like 
his own clammy glove. But what is far more extraordinary 
than this, — for such dirty water as this could alone be drawn 
from such a shallow and muddy source, — I found from the in- 
formation of a beneficed clergyman, of whom I never heard and 
whom I never saw, that I had not, as I rather supposed I had, 
lived a life of some reading, contemplation, and inquiry ; that I 
had not studied, as I rather supposed I had, to inculcate some 
Christian lessons in books ; that I had never tried, as I rather 
supposed I had, to turn a child or two tenderly towards the 
knowledge and love of our Saviour ; that I had never had, as I 
rather supposed I had had, departed friends, or stood beside 
open graves ; but that I had lived a life of “ uninterrupted 
prosperity,” and that I needed this “ check, overmuch,” and that 
the way to turn it to account was to read these sermons and 
these poems, enclosed, and written and issued by my correspond- 
ent ! I beg it may be understood that I relate facts of my own 
uncommercial experience, and no vain imaginings. The docu- 
ments in proof lie near my hand. 

Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining 
character, was the wonderful persistency with which kind sym- 
pathizers assumed that I had injuriously coupled with the so 
suddenly relinquished pursuit those personal habits of mine 
most obviously incompatible with it, and most plainly impossi- 
ble of being maintained, along with it. As, all that exercise, 
all that cold bathing, all that wind and weather, all that uphill 
training, — all that everything else, say, which is usually carried 
about by express trains in a portmanteau and hatbox, and par- 
taken of under a flaming row of gas-lights in the company of 
two thousand people. This assuming of a whole case against 
all fact and likelihood struck me as particularly droll, and was 
an oddity of which I certainly had had no adequate experience 
in life until I turned that curious fly-leaf. 

My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out on 
the fly-leaf, very piously indeed. They were glad, at such a 
serious crisis, to afford me another opportunity of sending that 
post-office order. I need n’t make it a pound, as previously 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


351 


insisted on ; ten shillings might ease my mind. And Heaven 
forbid that they should refuse, at such an insignificant figure, to 
take a weight off the memory of an erring fellow-creature ! One 
gentleman, of an artistic turn (and copiously illustrating the 
books of the Mendicity Society), thought it might soothe my 
conscience in the tender respect of gifts misused, if I would im- 
mediately cash up in aid of his lowly talent for original design, 

— as a specimen of which he enclosed me a work of art which 
I recognized as a tracing from a woodcut originally published 
in the late Mrs. Trollope’s book on America, forty or fifty years 
ago. The number of people who were prepared to live long 
years after me, untiring benefactors to their species, for fifty 
pounds apiece down, was astonishing. Also, of those who 
wanted bank-notes for stiff penitential amounts, to give away, — 
not to keep, on any account. 

Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated recom- 
mendations of themselves into the fly-leaf that was to have been 
so blank. It was specially observable that every prescriber, 
whether in a moral or physical direction, knew me thoroughly, 

— knew me from head to heel, in and out, through and through, 
upside down. I was a glass piece of general property, and 
everybody was on the most surprisingly intimate terms with me. 
A few public institutions had complimentary perceptions of cor- 
ners in my mind, of which, after considerable self-examination, 
I have not discovered any indication. Neat little printed forms 
were addressed to those corners, beginning with the words : “ I 
give and bequeath.” 

Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the most 
honest, the most modest, and the least vain-glorious of all the 
records upon this strange fly-leaf was a letter from the self-de- 
ceived discoverer of the recondite secret, “ how to live four or 
five hundred years.” Doubtless it will seem so, yet the state- 
ment is not exaggerative by any means, but is made in my seri- 
ous and sincere conviction. With this, and with a laugh at the 
rest that shall not be cynical, I turn the fly-leaf, and go on 
again. 


* 


852 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XXXV. 

A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 

One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o’clock in 
the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view com- 
manded by the windows of my lodging an equestrian phenom- 
enon. It was a fellow-creature on horseback dressed in the 
absurdest manner. The fellow-creature wore high boots, some 
other (and much larger) fellow-creature’s breeches, of a slack- 
baked doughy color and a baggy form, a blue shirt, whereof the 
skirt or tail was puffily tucked into the waistband of the said 
breeches, no coat, a red shoulder-belt, and a demi-semi-military 
scarlet hat with a feathered ornament in front, which to the 
uninstructed human vision had the appearance of a moulting 
shuttlecock. I laid down the newspaper with which I had been 
occupied, and surveyed the fellow-man in question with aston- 
ishment. Whether he had been sitting to any painter as a 
frontispiece for a new edition of Sartor Resartus ; whether “ the 
husk or shell of him,” as the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might 
put it, were founded on a jockey, on a circus, on General Gari- 
baldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy-shop, on Guy Fawkes, on 
Wax- Work, on Gold Digging, on Bedlam, or on all, were 
doubts that greatly exercised my mind. Meanwhile my fellow- 
man stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on the 
slippery stones of my Covent Garden street, and elicited shrieks 
from several sympathetic females, by convulsively restraining 
himself from pitching over his horse’s head. In the very crisis 
of these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his 
charger’s tail was in a tobacconist’s shop, and his head anywhere 
about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar portents, 
who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and 
slide the more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvi- 
rate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three 
right hands a§ commanding unseen troops to Up, guards, and at 
’em. Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them 
to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the 
direction of the Surrey Hills. 

Judging from these appearances that a procession was under 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


353 


way, I threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satis- 
faction of beholding it advancing along the street. It was a 
Teetotal procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was long 
enough to consume twenty minutes in passing. There were a 
great number of children in it, some of them so very young in 
their mothers’ arms as to be in the act of practically exemplify- 
ing their abstinence from fermented liquors, and attachment to 
An unintoxicating drink, while the procession defiled. The dis- 
play was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as any good-humored 
holiday assemblage of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people 
should be. It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder- 
belts, and abounded in flowers, as if those latter trophies had 
come up in profusion under much watering. The day being 
breezy, the insubordination of the large banners was very repre- 
hensible. Each of these being borne aloft on two poles and 
stayed with some half-dozen lines, was carried, as polite books 
in the last century used to be written, by “various hands,” and 
the anxiety expressed in the upturned faces of those officers, — • 
something between the anxiety attendant on the balancing art, 
and that inseparable from the pastime of kite-flying, with a 
touch of the angler’s quality in landing his scaly prey, — much 
impressed me. Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the 
wind, and go about in the most inconvenient manner. This 
always happened oftenest with such gorgeous standards as those 
representing a gentleman in black, corpulent with tea and water, 
in the laudable act of summarily reforming a family feeble and 
pinched with beer. The gentleman in black distended by wind 
would then conduct himself with the most unbecoming levity, 
while the beery family, growing beerier, would frantically try to 
tear themselves away from his ministration. Some of the in- 
scriptions accompanying the banners were of a highly deter- 
mined character as “ We never, never will give up the temper- 
ance cause,” with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive to 
the profane mind of Mrs. Micawber’s “ I never will desert Mr. 
Micawber,” and of Mr. Micawber’s retort, “ Really, my dear, I 
am not aware that you were ever required by any human being 
to do anything of the sort.” 

At intervals a gloom would fall on the passing members of the 
procession, for which I was at first unable to account. But this 
I discovered, after a little observation, to be occasioned by the 
coming on of the Executioners, — the terrible official beings 
who were to make the speeches by and by, — who were dis- 
tributed in open carriages at various points of the cavalcade. 
A dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, as from many wet 
blankets, invariably preceded the rolling on of the dreadful cars 
23 


354 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


containing these Headsmen, and I noticed that the wretched 
people who closely followed them, and who were in a manner 
forced to contemplate their folded arms, complacent counte- 
nances, and threatening lips, were more overshadowed by the 
cloud and damp than those in front. Indeed, I perceived in 
some of these so moody an implacability towards the magnates 
of the scaffold, and so plain a desire to tear them limb from 
limb, that I would respectfully suggest to the managers the ex- 
pediency of conveying the Executioners to the scene of their 
dismal labors by unfrequented ways and in closely tilted carts 
next Whitsuntide. 

The procession was composed of a series of smaller proces- 
sions, which had come together, each from its own metropolitan 
district. An infusion of Allegory became perceptible when pa- 
triotic Peckham advanced. So I judged, from the circumstance 
of Peckham’s unfurling a silken banner that fanned heaven and 
earth with the words, “ The Peckham Life-Boat.” No boat 
being in attendance, though life, in the likeness of “ a gallant, 
gallant crew,” in nautical uniform, followed the flag, I was led 
to meditate on the fact that Peckham is described by geogra- 
phers as an inland settlement with no larger or nearer shore 
line than the towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which stormy 
station I had been given to understand no Life-Boat exists. 
Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to the con- 
clusion that if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of pickled 
poetry, this was the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic 
Peckham picked. 

I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the 
whole pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified expression 
with a direct meaning, which I will now explain. It involves 
the title of this paper, and a little fair trying of Teetotalism by 
its own tests. 

There were many people on foot, and many people in vehicles 
of various kinds. The former were pleasant to see, and the 
latter were not pleasant to see : for the reason that I never, on 
any occasion or under any circumstances, have beheld heavier 
overloading of horses than in this public show. Unless the im- 
position of a great van laden with from ten to twenty people on 
a single horse be a moderate tasking of the poor creature, then 
the Temperate use of horses was immoderate and cruel. From 
the smallest and lightest horse to the largest and heaviest, there 
were many instances in which the beast of burden was so 
shamefully overladen, that the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals have frequently interposed in less gross 
cases. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


355 


Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there 
unquestionably is, such a thing as Use without Abuse, and that 
therefore the Total Abolitionists are irrational and wrong- 
headed. But the procession completely converted me. For 
so large a number of the people using draught-horses in it were 
clearly unable to use them without Abusing them, that I per- 
ceived Total Abstinence from Horseflesh to be the only remedy 
of which the case admitted. As it is all one to Teetotallers 
whether you take half a pint of beer or half a gallon, so it was 
all one here whether the beast of burden were a pony or a cart- 
horse. Indeed, my case had the special strength that the half- 
pint quadruped underwent as much suffering as the half-gallon 
quadruped. Moral : Total Abstinence from Horseflesh through 
the whole length and breadth of the scale. This pledge will be 
in course of administration to all Teetotal processionists, not 
pedestrians, at the publishing office of “ All the Year Round, 
on the first day of April, One Thousand Eight} Hundred and 
Seventy. 

Observe a point for consideration. This procession com- 
prised many persons, in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts, 
barouches, chaises, and what not, who were merciful to the 
dumb beasts that drew them, and did not overcharge their 
strength. What is to be done with those unoffending persons ? 
I will not run amuck and vilify and defame them, as Teetotal 
tracts and platforms would most assuredly do, if the question 
were one of drinking instead of driving : I merely ask what is 
to be done with them ? The reply admits of no dispute what- 
ever. Manifestly, in strict accordance with Teetotal Doctrines, 
THEY must come in, too, and take the Total Abstinence from 
Horseflesh Pledge. It is not pretended that those members of 
the procession misused certain auxiliaries which in most coun- 
tries and all ages have been bestowed upon man for his use, but 
it is undeniable that other members of the procession did. 
Teetotal mathematics demonstrate that the less includes the 
greater; that the guilty include the innocent, the blind the see- 
ing, the deaf the hearing, the dumb the speaking, the drunken 
the sober. If any of the moderate users of draught-cattle in 
question should deem that there is any gentle violence done to 
their reason by these elements of logic, they are invited to come 
out of the procession next Whitsunside, and look at it from my 
window. 



ADDITIONAL 


CHRISTMAS STORIES. 




I 

■i 


/ 


SOMEBODIES LUGGAGE. 


m THREE CHAPTERS. 


CHAPTER I. 

HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR. 

The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, an^ 
having come of a family of Waiters, and owning at the 
present time five brothers who are all Waiters, and like- 
wise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish to 
ofier a few words respecting his calling ; first having the 
pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedi- 
cation of the same unto Joseph, much respected Head 
Waiter at the Slamjam Coffee-house, London, E. C., than 
which a individual more eminently deserving of the name 
of man, or a more amenable honor to his own head and 
heart, whether considered in the light of a Waiter or re- 
garded as a human being, do not exist. 

In case confusion should arise in the public mind 
(which it is open to confusion on many subjects) respect- 
ing what is meant or implied by the term Waiter, the 
present humble lines would wish to offer an explanation. 
It may not be generally known that the person as goes 
out to wait is not a Waiter. It may not be generally 
known that the hand as is called in extra, at the Free- 
masons^ Tavern, or the London, or the Albion, or other- 
wise, is not a Waiter. Such hands may be took on for 
Public Dinners by the bushel (and you may know them 
by their breathing with difficulty when in attendance, and 
taking away the bottle ere yet it is half out) ; but such 
are not Waiters. For you cannot lay down the tailoring, 
or the shoemaking, or the brokering, or the green-grocer- 
ing, or the pictorial-periodicalling, or the second-hand 
wardrobe, or the small fancy businesses, — you cannot 
lay down those lines of life at your will and pleasure by 


360 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


the half-day or evening, and take np Waitering. You, 
may suppose you can, but you cannot ; or you may go so 
far as to say you do, but you do not. Nor yet can you 
lay down the gentleman^s-service when stimulated by 
prolonged incompatibility on the part of Cooks (and here 
it may be remarked that Cooking and Incompatibility will 
be mostly found united), and take up Waitering. It has 
been ascertained that what a gentleman will sit meek un- 
der, at home, he will not bear out of doors, at the Slam- 
jam or any similar establishment. Then, what is the 
inference to be drawn respecting true Waitering? You 
must be bred to it. You must be born to it. 

Would you know how born to it. Fair Reader, — if of 
the adorable female sex ? Then learn from the biograph- 
ical experience of one that is a Waiter in the sixty-first 
year of his age. 

You were conveyed, — ere yet your dawning powers 
were otherwise developed than to harbor vacancy in your 
inside, — you were conveyed, by surreptitious means, 
into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic and 
General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that 
healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of the 
British female constitution. Your mother was married to 
your father (himself a distant Waiter) in the profoundest 
secrecy ; for a Waitress known to be married would ruin 
the best of businesses, — it is the same as on the stage. 
Hence your being smuggled into the pantry, and that — 
to add to the infliction — by an unwilling grandmother. 
Under the combined influence of the smells of roast and 
boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook 
of your earliest nourishment ; your unwilling grandmother 
sitting prepared to catch you when your mother was 
called and dropped you ; your grandmother’s shawl ever 
ready to stifle your natural complainings ; your innocent 
mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, 
dish-covers, and cold gravy ; your mother calling down 
the pipe for veals and porks, instead of soothing you with 
nursery rhymes. Under these untoward circumstances 
you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, 
ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated 
less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your sys- 
tem curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all. 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


361 


At length she was no longer spared, and could have been 
thankfully spared much sooner. When your brothers be- 
gan to appear in succession, your mother retired, left 
olf her smart dressing (she had previously been a smart 
dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had previously 
been flowing), and haunted your father late of nights, 
lying in wait for him, through all weathers, up the shabby 
court which led to the back door of the Koyal Old Dust- 
Bin (said to have been so named by George the Fourth), 
where your father was Head. But the Dust-Bin was go- 
ing down then, and your father took but little, — except- 
ing from a liquid point of view. Your mothers object in 
those visits was of a housekeeping character, and you 
was set on to whistle your father out. Sometimes he 
came out, but generally not. Come or not come, how- 
ever, all that part of his existence which was unconnected 
with open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was 
acknowledged ’by your mother to be a close secret, and 
you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets 
both of you, and would scarcely have confessed under 
torture that you knew your father, or that your father had 
any name than Dick (which was n^t his name, though he 
was never known by any other), or that he had kith or 
kin, or chick or child. Perhaps the attraction of this 
mystery, combined with your father’s having a damp 
compartment to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the 
Dust-Bin, — a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink 
in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and 
three windows that did n’t match each other or anything 
else, and no daylight, — caused your young mind to feel 
convinced that you must grow up to be a Waiter too ; 
but you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your 
brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt 
convinced that you was born to the Waitering. At this 
stage of your career, what was your feelings one day 
when your father came home to your mother in open 
broad daylight, — of itself an act of Madness on the part 
of a Waiter, — and took to his bed (leastwise, your 
mother and family’s bed), with the statement that his 
eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in vain, 
your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day 
and a night, when gleams of reason and old business fit/ 


S62 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


fully illuminated his being, '' Two and two is five And 
three is sixpence/^ Interred in the parochial department 
of the neighboring churchyard, and accompanied to the 
grave by as many Waiters of long standing as could 
spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, 
one), your bereaved form was attired in a white Leckank- 
echer, and you was took on from motives of benevolence 
at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper. 
Here, supporting nature on what you found in the plates 
(which was as it happened, and but too often thought- 
lessly immersed in mustard), and on what you found in 
the glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and 
lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing, till you 
was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing every 
individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being 
sawdust ; your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, 
frequently hiding a heavy heart under the smart tie of 
your white neckankecher (or, correctly speaking, lower 
down and more to the left), you picked up the rudiments 
of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and 
by calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your 
mind with chalk on the back of the corner-box partition, 
until such time as you used the inkstand when it was out 
of hand, attained to manhood and to be the Waiter that 
you find yourself. 

I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on 
behalf of the calling so long the calling of m3’^self and 
family, and the public interest in which is but too often 
very limited. We are not generally understood. No, 
we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. 
For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness 
of spirits, or what might be termed indifference or apathy. 
Put it to yourself what would your own state of mind be, 
if you was one of an enormous family every member of 
which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. 
Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete with 
animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and 
again at nine, p. m., and that the repleter you was, the 
more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it 
to yourself that it was your business, when your diges- 
tion was well on, to take a personal interest and sym- 
pathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE 


363 


the sake of argument, only a hundred), <\^hose imagina- 
tions was given up to grease and fat and giavy and 
melted butter, and abandoned to questioning you about 
cuts of this, and dishes of that, — each of ^em going on 
as if him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the 
world. Then look what you are expected to know. 
You are never out, but they seem to think you regularly 
attend everywhere. “What’s this, Christopher, that I 
hear about the smashed Excursion Train?” — “How 
are they doing at the Italian Opera, Christopher ? ” — 
‘ Christopher,- what are the real particulars of this busi- 
ness at the Yorkshire Bank ? ” Similarly a ministry 
gives me more trouble than it gives the Queen As to 
Lord Palmerston, the constant and wearing connection 
into which I have been brought with his lordship during 
the last few years is deserving of a pension. Then look 
at the Hypocrites we are made, and the lies (white, I 
hope) that are forced upon us I Why must a sedentary- 
pursuited Waiter be considered to be a judge of horse- 
flesh, and to have a most tremenjous interest in horse- 
training and racing ? Yet it would be half our little 
incomes out of our pockets if we did n’t take on to have 
those sporting tastes. It is the same (inconceivable 
why!) with Farming. Shooting, equally so. I am sure 
that so regular as the months of August, September, and 
October come round, I am ashamed of myself in my own 
private bosom for the way in which I make believe to 
care whether or not the grouse is strong on the wing, 
(much their wings, or drumsticks either, signifies to me, 
uncooked 1) and whether the partridges is plentiful among 
the turnips, and whether the pheasants is shy or bold, 
or anything else you please to mention. Yet you may 
see me, or any other Waiter of my standing, holding 
on by the back of the box, and leaning over a gentleman 
with his purse out and his bill before him, discussing 
these points in a confidential tone of voice, as if my hap- 
piness in life entirely depended on ’em. 

I have mentioned our little incomes. Look at the 
most unreasonable point of all, and the point on which 
the greatest injustice is done us I Whether it is owing 
to our always carrying so much change in our right-hand 
trousers-pocket, and so many halfj)ence in our coat-tails, 


364 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


or whether it is human nature (which I were loathe to 
believe), what is meant by the everlasting fable that 
Head Waiters is rich ? How did that fable get into 
circulation ? Who first put it about, and what are the 
facts to establish the unblushing statement ? Come forth, 
thou slanderer, and refer the public to the Waiter’s 
will in Doctors’ Commons supporting thy malignant 
hiss I Yet this is so commonly dwelt upon — espe- 
cially by the screws who give Waiters the least — that 
denial is vain ; and we are obliged, for our credit’s sake, 
to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, 
when of the two we are much more likely to go into a 
union. There was formerly a screw as frequented the 
Slamjam ere yet the present writer had quitted that es- 
tablishment on a question of tea-ing his assistant staff out 
of his own pocket, which screw canned the taunt to its 
bitterest heighth. Never soaring above threepence, and 
is often as not grovelling on the earth a penny lower, he 
yet represented the present writer as a large holder of 
Consols, a lender of money on mortgage, a Capitalist. 
He has been overheard to dilate to other customers on 
the allegation that the present writer put out thousands 
of pounds at interest in Distilleries and Breweries 
“ Well, Christopher,” he would say (having grovelled 
his lowest on the earth, half a moment before), ‘‘ looking 
out for a House to open, eh ? Can’t find a business to 
be disposed of on a scale as is up to your resources, 
humph ? ” To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood has 
this misrepresentation taken wing, that the well-known 
and highly respected Old Charles, long eminent at the 
West Country Hotel, and by some considered the Father 
of the Waitering, found himself under the obligation to 
fall into it through so many years that his own wife 
(for he had an unbeknown old lady in that capacity 
towards himself) believed it I And what was the conse- 
quence ? When he was borne to his grave on the shoul- 
ders of six picked Waiters, with six more for change, six 
more acting as pall-bearers, all keeping step in a pouring 
shower without a dry eye visible, and a concourse only 
inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings was equally 
ransacked high and low for property, and none was 
found ! How could it be found, when, beyond his last 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


365 


monthly collection of walking-sticks, umbrellas, and 
pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened to have been not 
yet disposed of, though he had ever been through life 
punctual in clearing off his collections by the month), 
there was no property existing ? Such, however, is the 
force of this universal libel, that the widow of Old 
Charles, at the present hour an inmate of the Almshouses 
of the Cork-cutters’ Company, in Blue Anchor Road (iden- 
tified sitting at the door of one of ’em, in a clean cap and 
a Windsor arm-chair, only last Monday), expects John’s 
hoarded wealth to be found hourly I Nay, ere yet ho 
had succumbed to the grisly dart, and when his portrait 
was painted in oils life-size, by subscription of the fre- 
quenters of the West Country, to hang over the cofiee- 
room chimney-piece, there were not wanting those who 
contended that' what is termed the accessories of such 
portrait ought to be the Bank of England out of window, 
and a strong-box on the table. And but for better-regu- 
lated minds contending for a bottle and screw and the 
attitude of drawing, — and carrying their point, — it 
would have been so handed down to posterity. 

I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. 
Having, I hope without offence to any quarter, offered 
such observations as I felt it my duty to offer, in a free 
country which has ever dominated the seas, on the gen- 
eral subject, I will now proceed to wait on the particular 
question. 

At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so 
far as concerned notice given, with a House that shall be 
nameless, — for the question on which I took my depart- 
ing stand was a fixed charge for Waiters, and no House 
as commits itself to that eminently Un-English act of more 
than foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me, 
— I repeat, at a momentous crisis, when I was off with a 
House too mean for mention, and not yet on with that to 
which I have ever since had the honor of being attached 
in the capacity of Head,* I was casting about what to do 
uext. Then it were that proposals were made to me on 
behalf of my present establishment. Stipulations were 

♦ Its name and address at length, with other full particulars, all odi 
torially struck out. 


366 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


necessary on my part, emendations were necessary on my 
part ; in the end, ratifications ensued on both sides, and ] 
entered on a new career. 

We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. 
We are not a general dining business, nor do we wish it. 
In consequence, when diners drop in, we know what to 
give ’em as will keep ’em away another time. We are a 
Private Room or Family business also ; but Coffee-Room 
principal. Me and the Directory and the Writing Mate- 
rials and cetrer occupy a place to ourselves, — a place 
fended off up a step or two at the end of the Coffee-Room, 
in what I call the good old-fashioned style. The good 
old-fashioned style is, that whatever you want, down to 
a wafer, you must be olely^and solely dependent on the 
Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born 
Child into his hands. There is no other way in which 
a business untinged with Continental Vice can be con- 
ducted. (It were bootless to add that if languages is re- 
quired to be jabbered and English is not good enough, both 
families and gentlemen had better go somewhere else.) 

When I began to settle down in this right-principled 
and well-conducted House, I noticed, under the bed in 
No. 24 B (which it is up a angle off the staircase, and 
usually put off upon the lowly-minded), a heap of things 
in a corner. I asked our Head Chambermaid in the 
course of the day, — 

‘‘ What are them things in 24 B ? ” 

To which she answered, with a careless air, — 
Somebody’s Luggage.” 

Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I 
says, — 

Whose Luggage ? ” 

Evading my eye, she replied, — 

Lor I How should I know I ” 

— Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some 
pertness, though acquainted with her business. 

A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. He must 
be at one extremity or the other of the social scale. He 
cannot be at the waist of it, or anywhere else but the 
extremities. It is for him to decide which of the extremi- 
ties. 

On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


367 


Mrs. Pratchett so distinctly to understand my decision, 
that I broke her spirit as towards myself, then and there, 
and for good. Let not inconsistency be suspected on 
account of my mentioning Mrs. Pratchett as Mrs.,^^ and 
having formerly remarked that a waitress must not be 
married. Readers are respectfully requested to notice 
that Mrs. Pratchett was not a waitress, but a chamber- 
maid. Now a chambermaid may be married ; if Head, 
generally is married, — or says so. It comes to the same 
thing as expressing what is customary. (N. B. Mr. 
Pratchett is in Australia, and his address there is “ the 
Bush.^^) 

Having took Mrs. Pratchett down as many pegs as 
was essential to the future happiness of all parties, I re- 
quested her to explain herself. 

“ For instance,” I says, to give her a little encourage- 
ment, “who is Somebody?” 

“ I give you my sacred honor, Mr. Christopher,” an- 
swers Pratchett, “that I haven^t the faintest notion.” 

But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, 
I should have doubted this ; but in respect of positiveness 
it was hardly to be discriminated from an affidavit. 

“ Then you never saw him ? ” I followed her up with. 

“Nor yet,” said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her eyes and 
making as if she had just took a pill of unusual circum- 
ference, which gave a remarkable force to her denial, — 
“ nor yet any servant in this house. All have been 
changed, Mr. Christopher, within five year, and Some 
body left his Luggage here before then.” 

Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the 
Bard of A. i.) “confirmation strong.” So it had really 
and truly happened. Miss Martin is the young lady at 
the bar as makes out our bills ; and though higher than I 
could wish considering her station, is perfectly well be- 
haved. 

Further investigations led to the disclosure that there 
was a bill against this Luggage to the amount of two 
sixteen six. The Luggage had been lying under the bed- 
stead in 24 B over six year. The bedstead is a four- 
poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance, and is, 
as I once said, probably connected with more than 24 
— which I remember my hearers was pleased to 
laugh at, at the time 


868 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


I don’t know wliy, — when no we know why ? — but 
this Luggage laid heavy on my mind. I fell a wondering 
about Somebody, and what he had got and been up to. 
I could n’t satisfy my thoughts why he should leave so 
much Luggage against so small a bill. For 1 had the 
Luggage out within a day or two and turned it over, and 
the following were the items : — A black portmanteau, a 
black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel, 
a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick. 
It was all very dusty and fluey. I had our porter up to 
get under the bed and fetch it out ; and though he habitu- 
ally wallows in dust, — swims in it from morning to night, 
and wears a close-fltting waistcoat with black calimanco 
sleeves for the purpose, — it made him sneeze again, and 
his throat was that hot with it that it was obliged to be 
cooled with a drink of Allsopp’s draft. 

The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of 
having it put back when it was well dusted and washed 
with a wet cloth, — previous to which it was so covered 
with feathers that you might have thought it was turning 
into poultry, and would by and by begin to Lay, — I say, 
instead of having it put back, I had it carried into one 
of my places down stairs. There from time to time I 
stared at it and stared at it, till it seemed to grow big 
and grow little, and come forward at me and retreat 
again, and go through all manner of performances resem- 
bling intoxication. When this had lasted weeks, — I may 
say months, and not be far out, — I one day thought of 
asking Miss Martin for the particulars of the Two sixteen 
six total. She was so obliging as to extract it from the 
books, — it dating before her time, — and heie follows a 
true copy : — 

Coffee-Room. 


1856. 


No. 4. 


Feb. 2d, Pen and paper 


£006 


Port Negus 
Ditto . . 


0 2 0 
0 2 0 
0 0 6 
0 2 6 


Pen and paper . 
Tumbler broken 


Carried forward . 


£016 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


369 


Brought forward £ 0 7 6 

Brandy 020 

Pen and paper 0 0 6 

Anchovy toast 0 2 6 

Pen and paper 0 0 6 

Bed 030 

Feb. 3d, Pen and paper 0 0 6 

Breakfast 026 

“ Broiled ham 0 2 0 

Eggs 0 10 

Watercresses . . . . . 0 10 

Shrimps 0 10 

Pen and paper 0 0 6 

Blotting-paper 0 0 6 

Messenger to Paternoster Row and 

back 016 

Again, when No Answer .... 0 1 6 

Brandy 2s., Devilled Pork chop 2s. . 0 4 0 

Pens and paper 0 10 

Messenger to Albemarle Street and 

back 010 

Again (detained), when No Answer . 0 16 

Saltcellar broken . 0 3 6 

Large Liqueur-glass Orange Brandy . 0 16 

Dinner, Soup Fish Joint and bird . . 0 7 6 

Bottle old East India Brown . . . 0 8 0 

Pen and paper 0 0 6 

£ 2 16 6 


Mem. : January 1st, 1857. He went out after dinner, 
directing Luggage to be ready when he called for it. 
Never called. 

So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill 
appeared to me, if I may so express my doubts, to involve 
it in a yet more lurid halo. Speculating it over with the 
Mistress, she informed me that the luggage had been 
advertised in the Master^s time as being to be sold after 
such and such a day to pay expenses, but no further steps 
had been taken. (I may here remark that the Mistress 
is a widow in her fourth year. The Master was pos- 
sessed of one of those unfortunate constitutions in which 


370 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


Spirits turns to Water, and rises in the ill-starred Vic- 
tim.) 

My speculating it over, not then only but repeatedly, 
sometimes with the Mistress, sometimes with one, some- 
times with another, led up to the Mistress’s saying to me, 

— whether at first in joke or in earnest, or half joke and 
half earnest, it matters not : — 

‘‘ Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome 
ofTer.” 

(If this should meet her eye, — a lovely blue, — may 
she not take it ill my mentioning that if I had been eight 
or ten year younger, I would have done as much by her I 
That is, I would have made her a offer. It is for others 
than me to denominate it a handsome one.) 

“ Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome 
offer.” 

Put a name to it, ma’am.” 

Look here, Christopher. Run over the articles of 
Somebody’s Luggage. You ’ve got it all by heart, I 
know.” 

“ A black portmanteau, ma’am, a black bag, a desk, a 
dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an 
umbrella strapped to a walking-stick.” 

All just as they were left. Nothing opened, nothing 
tampered with.” 

You are right, ma’am. All locked but the brown- 
paper parcel, and that sealed.” 

The Mistress was leaning on Miss Martin’s desk at 
the bai window, and she taps the open book that lays 
upon the desk, — she has a pretty-made hand, to be sure, 

— and bobs her head over it, and laughs. 

‘‘ Come,” says she, Christopher. Pay me Some- 
body’s bill, and you shall have Somebody’s luggage.” 

I rather took to the idea from the first moment ; but, — 

** It may n’t be worth the money,” I objected, seeming 
to hold back. 

That ’s a Lottery,” says the Mistress, folding her 
arms upon the book, — it ain’t her hands alone that ’s 
pretty made, the observation extends right up her arms. 
“ Won’t you venture two pound sixteen shillings and six- 
pence in the liOttery ? Why, there ’s no blanks I ” says 
the Mistress, laughing and bobbing her head again, ** you 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


371 


must win. If you lose, you must win I All prizes in 
this Lottery I Draw a blank, and remember, Gentlemen- 
Sportsmen, you ’ll still be entitled to a black portmanteau, 
a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a sheet of brown 
paper, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking- 
stick ! ” 

To make short of it. Miss Martin come round me, and 
Mrs. Pratchett come round me, and the Mistress she was 
completely round me already, and all the women in the 
house come round me, and if it had been Sixteen two 
instead of Two sixteen, I should have thought myself 
well out of it. For what can you do when they do come 
round you ? 

So I paid the money — down — and such a laughing 
as there was among ’em I But I turned the tables on 
’em regularly, when I said : — 

My family-name is Blue-Beard. I ’m going to open 
Somebody’s Luggage all alone in the Secret Chamber, 
and not a female eye catches sight of the contents ! ” 

Whether I thought proper to have the firmness to keep 
to this don’t signify, or whether any female eye, and if 
any how many, was really present when the opening of 
the Luggage came off. Somebody’s Luggage is the 
question at present : Nobody’s eyes, nor yet noses. 

What I still look at most, in connection with that Lug- 
gage, is the extraordinary quantity of writing-paper, and 
all written on I And not our paper neither, — not the 
paper charged in the bill, for we know our paper, — so 
he must have been always at it. And he had crumpled 
up this writing of his, everywhere, in every part and par- 
cel of his luggage. There was writing in his dressing- 
case, writing in his boots, writing among his shaving- 
tackle, writing in his hat-box, writing folded away down 
among the very whalebones of his umbrellq,. 

His clothes was n’t bad, what there was of ’em. His 
dressing-case was poor, — not a particle of silver stop- 
per, — bottle apertures with nothing in ’em, like empty 
little dog-kennels, — and a most searching description of 
tooth-powder diffusing itself around, as under a deluded 
mistake that all the chinks in the fittings was divisions in 
teeth. His clothes I parted with, well enough, to a sec- 
ond-hand dealer not far from St. Clement’s Danes, in the 


372 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


Strand, — him as the ofl&cers in the Army mostly dis- 
pose of their uniforms to, when hard pressed with debts 
of honor, if I may judge from their coats and epaulets 
diversifying the window with their backs towards the 
public. The same party bought in one lot the portman- 
teau, the bag, the desk, the dressing-case, the hat-box, 
the umbrella, strap, and walking-stick. On my remark- 
ing that I should have thought those articles not quite in 
his line, he said : “No more ith a man’th grandmother, 
Mithter Chrithtopher ; but if any man will bring hith 
grandmother here, and offer her at a fair trifle below 
what the ’ll feth with good luck when the ’th thcoured 
and turned — I ’ll buy her ! ” 

These transactions brought me home, and, indeed, 
more than home, for they left a goodish profit on the 
original investment. And now there remained the writ- 
ings ; and the writings I particular wish to bring under 
the candid attention of the reader. 

I wish to do so without postponement, for this reason. 
That is to say, namel}?-, viz., i. e., as follows, thus : — Be- 
fore I proceed to recount the mental sufferings of which 
I became the prey in consequence of the writings, and 
before following up that harrowing tale with a statement 
of the wonderful and impressive catastrophe, as thrilling 
in its nature as unlooked for in any other capacity, which 
crowned the ole and filled the cup of unexpectedness to 
overflowing, the writings themselves ought to stand forth 
to view. Therefore it is that they now come next. One 
word to introduce them, and I lay down my pen (I hope, 
my unassuming pen), until I take it up to trace the 
gloomy sequel of a mind with something on it. 

He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful bad 
hand. Utterly regardless of ink, he lavished it on every 
undeserving object, — on his clothes, his desk, his hat, 
the handle of his tooth-brush, his umbrella. Ink was 
found freely on the coffee-room carpet by No. 4 table, and 
two blots was on his restless couch. A reference to the 
document I have given entire will show that on the morn- 
ing of the third of February, eighteen fifty-six, he pro- 
cured his no less than fifth pen and paper. To whatever 
deplorable act of ungovernable composition he immolated 
those materials obtained from the bar, there is no doubt 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


373 


that the fatal deed was committed in bed, and that it left 
its evidences but too plainly, long afterwards, upon the 
pillow-case. 

He had put no Heading to any of his writings. Alas I 
Was he likely to have a Heading without a Head, and 
where was his Head when he took such things into it ? 
In some cases, such as his Boots, he would appear to 
have hid the writings ; thereby involving his style in 
greater obscurity. But his Boots was at least pairs, — 
and no two of his writings can put in any claim to be so 
regarded. Here follows (not to give more specimens) 
what was found in 


HIS BOOTS. 

Eh ! well then. Monsieur Mutuel I What do I know, 
what can I say ? I assure you that he calls himself Mon- 
sieur The Englishman. 

Pardon. But I think it is impossible, said Monsieur 
Mutuel, — a spectacled, snuffy, stooping old gentleman 
in carpet shoes and a cloth cap with a peaked shade, a 
loose blue frock-coat reaching to his heels, a large limp 
white shirt-frill, and cravat to correspond, — that is to 
say, white was the natural color of his linen on Sundays, 
but it toned down with the week. 

It is,^^ repeated Monsieur Mutuel ; his amiable old 
walnut-shell countenance very walnut-shelly indeed as he 
smiled and blinked in the bright morning sunlight, — it 
is, my cherished Madame Bouclet, I think, impossible 1 ” 

‘‘ Hey ! (with a little vexed cry and a great many 
tosses of her head.) “ But it is not impossible that you 
are a Pig I ” retorted Madame Bouclet, a compact little 
woman of thirty-five or so. “ See then, — look there, — 
read I ^ On the second floor Monsieur Anglais.^ Is it 
not so? 

“ It is so,^^ said Monsieur Mutuel. 

“ Good. Continue your morning walk. Get out I '• 
Madame Bouclet dismissed him with a lively snap of her 
fingers. 

The morning walk of Monsieur Mutuel was in the 
brightest patch that the sun made in the Grande Place of 
a dull old fortified French town. The manner of his 
morning walk was with his hands crossed behind him; 


374 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


an umbrella, in figure the express image of himself, al- 
ways in one hand ; a snufi-box in the other. Thus, with 
the shuffling gait of the Elephant (who really does deal 
with the very worst trousers-maker employed by the 
Zoological world, and who appeared to have recom- 
mended him to Monsieur Mutuel), the old gentleman 
sunned himself daily when sun was to be had, — of 
course, at the same time sunning a red ribbon at his but- 
ton-hole ; for was he not an ancient Frenchman ? 

Being told by one of the angelic sex to continue his 
morning walk and get out. Monsieur Mutuel laughed a 
walnut-shell laugh, pulled off his cap at arm^s length, 
with the hand that contained his snuff-box, kept it off' for 
a considerable period after he had parted from Madame 
Bouclet, and continued his morning walk and got out, 
like a man of gallantry as he was. 

The documentary evidence to which Madame Bouclet 
had referred Monsieur Mutuel was the list of her lodgers, 
sweetly written forth by her own Nephew and Book- 
keeper, who held the pen of an Angel, and posted up at 
the side of her gateway, for the information of the Police. 

Au second, M. Anglais, Proprietaire.^^ On the sec- 
ond floor, Mr. The Englishman, man of property. So it 
stood ; nothing could be plainer. 

Madame Bouclet now traced the line with her fore- 
finger, as it were to confirm and settle herself in her part- 
ing snap at Monsieur Mutuel, and so placing her right 
hand on her hip with a defiant air, as if nothing should 
ever tempt her to unsnap that snap, strolled out into the 
Place to glance up at the windows of Mr. The Eng 
lishman. That worthy happening to be looking out of 
window at the moment, Madame Bouclet gave him a 
graceful salutation with her head, looked to the right and 
looked to the left to account to him for her being there, 
considered for a moment, like one who accounted to her- 
self for somebody she had expected not being there, 
and re-entered her own gateway. Madame Bouclet let 
all her house giving on the Place in furnished flats or 
floors, and lived up the yard behind in company with 
Monsieur Bouclet her husband (great at billiards), an 
inherited brewing business, several fowls, two carts, a 
nephew, a little dog in a big kennel, a grape-vine, a count- 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


375 

iiig-hoase, four horses, a married sister (with a share in 
the brewing business), the husband and two children of 
the married sister, a parrot, a drum (performed on by 
the little boy of the married sister), two billeted soldiers, 
a quantity of pigeons, a fife (played by the nephew in a 
ravishing manner), several domestics and supernumera- 
ries, a perpetual flavor of coflee and soup, a terrific range 
of artificial rocks and wooden precipices at least four 
feet high, a small fountain, and half a dozen large sun- 
flowers. 

Now, the Englishman, in taking his Appartement, — or, 
as one might say on our side of the Channel, his set of 
chambers, — had given his name, correct to the letter, 
Langley. But as he had a British way of not opening 
his mouth very wide on foreign soil, except at meals, the 
Brewery had been able to make nothing of it but L’ Ang- 
lais. So Mr. The Englishman he had become and he re- 
mained. 

Never saw such a people I muttered Mr. The Eng- 
lishman, as he now looked out of window. “ Never did, 
in my life I 

This was true enough, for he had never before been 
out of his own country, — a right little island, a tight 
little island, a bright little island, a show-fight little 
island, and full of merit of all sorts ; but not the whole 
round world. 

These chaps, said Mr. The Englishman to himself, 
as his eye rolled over the Place, sprinkled with military 
here and there, “are no more like soldiers — I Noth- 
ing being sufficiently strong for the end of his sentence, 
he left it unended. 

This again (from the point of view of his experience) 
was strictly correct ; for though there was a great ag- 
glomeration of soldiers in the town and neighboring coun- 
try, you might have held a grand Keview and Field Day 
of them every one, and looked in vain among them all for 
a soldier choking behind his foolish stock, or a soldier 
lamed by his ill-fitting shoes, or a soldier deprived of the 
use of his limbs by straps and buttons, or a soldier elabo- 
rately forced to be self-helpless in all the small affairs of 
life. A swarm of brisk, bright, active, bustling, handy, 
odd, skirmishing fellows, able to turn to cleverly at any- 


376 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


thing, from a siege to soup, from great guns to needles 
and thread, from the broadsword exercise to slicing an 
onion, from making war to making omelets, was all you 
would have found. 

What a swarm ! From the Great Place under the eye 
of Mr. The Englishman, where a few awkward squads 
from the last conscription were doing the goose-step, — 
some members of those squads still as to their bodies, in 
the chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only military 
butterflies as to their regimentally clothed legs, — from 
the Great Place, away outside the fortiflcations, and away 
for miles along the dusty roads, soldiers swarmed. All 
day long, upon the grass-grown ramparts of the town, 
practising soldiers trumpeted and bugled ; all day long, 
down in angles of dry trenches, practising soldiers 
drummed and drummed. Every forenoon, soldiers burst 
out of the great barracks into the sandy gymnasium- 
ground hard by, and flew over the wooden horse, and 
hung on to flying ropes, and dangled upside-down be- 
tween parallel bars, and shot themselves off wooden 
platforms, — splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of 
soldiers. At every corner of the town wall, every guard- 
house, every gateway, every sentry-box, every draw- 
bridge, every reedy ditch and rushy dike, soldiers, sol- 
diers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall, 
guard -house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy 
ditch and rushy dike, the town was pretty well all sol- 
diers. 

What would the sleepy old town have been without 
the soldiers, seeing that even with them it had so over- 
slept itself as to have slept its echoes hoarse, its defen- 
sive bars and locks and bolts and chains all rusty, and 
its ditches stagnant I From the days when Vauban engi- 
neered it to that perplexing extent that to look at it was 
like being knocked on the head with it, the stranger be- 
coming stunned and stertorous under the shock of its 
incomprehensibility, — from the days when Vauban made 
it the express incorporation of every substantive and 
adjective in the art of military engineering, and not only 
twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to the right, 
to the left, opposite, under here, over there, in the dark, 
in the dirt, by gateway, archway, covered way, dry way, 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


377 


wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tow- 
er, pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likewise took a 
fortifying dive under the neighboring country, and came 
to the surface three or four miles off, blowing out incom- 
prehensible mounds and batteries among the quiet crops 
of chiccory and beet-root, — from those days to these the 
town had been asleep, and dust and rust and must had 
settled on its drowsy Arsenals and Magazines, and grass 
had grown up in its silent streets. 

On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leaped 
out of bed. On market-days, some friendly enchanter 
struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place, and 
instantly arose the liveliest booths and stalls and sittings 
and standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering and 
huckstering from many hundreds of tongues, and a pleas- 
ant, though peculiar, blending of colors, — white caps, 
blue blouses, and green vegetables, — and at last the 
Knight destined for the adventure seemed to have come 
in earnest, and all the Vaubanois sprang up awake. And 
now, by long, low-lying avenues of trees, jolting in white- 
hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey-back, and in tumbril 
and wagon and cart and cabriolet and afoot with barrow 
and burden, — and along the dikes and ditches and ca- 
nals, in little peak-prowed country boats, — came peasant 
men and women in flocks and crowds, bringing articles 
for sale. And here you had boots and shoes, and sweet- 
meats, and stuffs to wear, and here (in the cool shade of 
the Town Hall) you had milk and cream and butter and 
cheese, and here you had fruits and onions and carrots, 
and all things needful for your soup, and here you had 
poultry and flowers and protesting pigs, and here new 
shovels, axes, spades, and bill-hooks for your farming 
work, and here huge mounds of bread, and here your 
unground grain in sacks, and here your children's dolls, 
and here the cake-seller, announcing his wares by beat 
and roll of drum. And hark ! fanfaronade of trumpets, 
and here into the Great Place, resplendent in an open 
carriage, with four gorgeously attired servitors up behind, 
playing horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled 'Hhe Daughter 
of a Physician in massive golden chains and ear-rings, 
and blue-feathered hat, shaded from the admiring sun by 
two immense umbrellas of artificial roses, to dispense 


578 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


(from motives of philanthropy) that small and pleasant 
dose which had cured so many thousands I Toothache, 
earache, headache, heartache, stomach-ache, debility, ner- 
vousness, fits, fainting, fever, ague, all equally cured by 
the small and pleasant dose of the great Physician^s 
great daughter! The process was this, — she, the Daugh- 
ter of a Physician, proprietress of the superb equipage 
you now admired with its confirmatory blasts of trumpet, 
drum, and cymbal, told you so: On the first day after 
taking the small and pleasant dose, you would feel no 
particular influence beyond a most harmonious sensation 
of indescribable and irresistible joy ; on the second day 
you would be so astonishingly better that you would 
think yourself changed into somebody else ; on the third 
day you would be entirely free from your disorder, what- 
ever its nature and however long you had had it, and 
would seek out the Physician's daughter to throw your- 
self at her feet, kiss the hem of her garment, and buy as 
many more of the small and pleasant doses as by the sale 
of all your few effects you could obtain ; but she would 
be inaccessible, — gone for herbs to the Pyramids of 
Egypt, — and you would be (though cured) reduced to 
despair ! Thus would the Physician's daughter drive her 
trade (and briskly too), and thus would the buying and 
selling and mingling of tongues and colors continue, until 
the changing sunlight, leaving the Physician's Daughter 
in the shadow of high roofs, admonished her to jolt out 
westward, with a departing effect of gleam and glitter on 
the splendid equipage and brazen blast. And now the 
enchanter struck his staff* upon the stones of the Grea^ 
Place once more, and down went the booths, the sittings, 
and standings, and vanished the merchandise, and with 
it the barrows, donkeys, donkey-carts, and tumbrils, and 
all other things on wheels and feet, except the slow 
scavengers with unwieldy carts and meagre horses clear- 
ing up the rubbish, assisted by the sleek town pigeons, 
better plumped out than on non-market-days. While 
there was yet an hour or two to wane before the autumn 
sunset, the loiterer outside town-gate and drawbridge and 
postern and double-ditch would see the last white-hooded 
cart lessening in the avenue of lengthening shadows of 
trees, or the last country boat, paddled by the last mar- 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


379 


ket-woman on her way home, showing black upon the 
reddening long low narrow dike between him and the 
mill ; and as the paddle-parted scum and weed closed 
over the boat’s track, he might be comfortably sure that 
its sluggish rest would be troubled no more until next 
market-day. 

As it was not one of the Great Place’s days for getting 
out of bed, when Mr. The Englishman looked down at 
the young soldiers practising the goose-step there, his 
mind was left at liberty to take a military turn. 

“ These fellows are billeted everywhere about,” said 
he ; “ and to see them lighting the people’s fires, boiling 
the people’s pots, minding the people’s babies, rocking 
the people’s cradles, washing the people’s greens, and 
making themselves generally useful, in every sort of 
unmilitary way, is most ridiculous ! Never saw such a 
set of fellows, — never did in my life ! ” 

All perfectly true again. Was there not Private Valen- 
tine, in that very house, acting as sole housemaid, valet, 
cook, steward, and nurse, in the family of his captain. 
Monsieur le Capitaine De la Cour, — cleaning the fioors, 
making the beds, doing the marketing, dressing the cap- 
tain, dressing the dinners, dressing the salads, and dress- 
ing the baby, all with equal readiness ? Or, to put him 
aside, he being in loyal attendance on his Chief, was 
there- not Private Hyppolite, billeted at the Perfumer’s 
two hundred yards off, who, when not on duty, volun- 
teered to keep shop while the fair Perfumeress stepped 
out to speak to a neighbor or so, and laughingly sold 
soap with his war sword girded on him ? Was there not 
Emile, billeted at the Clock-maker’s, perpetually turning 
to of an evening with his coat off, winding up the stock ? 
Was there not Eugene, billeted at the Tinman’s, cultivat- 
ing, pipe in mouth, a garden four feet square, for the tin- 
man, in the little court behind the shop, and extorting the 
fruits of the earth from the same, on his knees, with the 
sweat of his brow ? Not to multiply examples, was there 
not Baptiste, billeted on the poor Water-Carrier, at that 
very instant sitting on the pavement in the sunlight, with 
his martial legs asunder, and one of the Water-Carrier’s 
spare pails between them, which (to the delight and glory 
of the heart of the Water-Carrier coming across the Place 


380 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


from the fountain, yoked and burdened) he was painting 
bright green outside and bright red within ? Or, to go 
no farther than the Barber’s at the very next door, was 
there not Corporal Th^ophile — 

“No,” said Mr. The Englishman, glancing down at 
the Barber’s, “ he is not there at present. There ’s the 
child, though.” 

A mere mite of a girl stood on the steps of the Barber’s 
shop, looking across the Place. A mere baby, one might 
call her, dressed in the close white linen cap which small 
French country children wear (like the Children in Dutch 
pictures), and in a frock of homespun blue, that had no 
shape except where it was tied round her little fat throat. 
So that, being naturally short and round all over, she 
looked, behind, as if she had been cut off at her natural 
waist, and had had her head neatly fitted on it. 

“ There ’s the child, though.” 

To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was 
rubbing the eyes, the eyes had been closed in a nap, and 
were newly opened. But they seemed to be looking so 
intently across the Place, that the Englishman looked in 
the same direction. 

“ Oh I ” said he, presently. “ I thought as much. The 
Corporal ^s there.” 

The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps 
a thought under the middle size, but very neatly made, 
— a sunburnt Corporal with a brown peaked beard, — 
faced about at the moment, addressing voluble words of 
instruction to the squad in hand. Nothing was amiss or 
awry about the Corporal. A lithe and nimble Corporal, 
quite complete, from the sparkling dark eyes under his 
knowing uniform cap to his sparkling white gaiters. The 
very image and presentment of a Corporal of his country’s 
army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of his waist, 
the broadest line of his Bloomer trousers, and their nar- 
rowest line at the calf of his leg. 

Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked 
on, and the Corporal looked on (but the last-named at his 
men), until the drill ended a few minutes afterwards, and 
the military sprinkling dried up directly, and was gone. 
Then said Mr. The Englishman to himself, “ Look here I 
By George I ” And the Corporal, dancing towards the 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


381 


Barber’s with his arms wide open, caught up the child, 
held her over his head in a flying attitude, caught her 
down again, kissed her, and made off with her into the 
Barber’s house. 

Now Mr. The Englishman had had a quarrel with his 
erring and disobedient and disowned daughter, and there 
w^ a child in that case too. Had not his daughter been 
a child, and had she not taken angel-flights above his 
head as this child had flown above the Corporal’s ? 

He ’s a ” — National Participled — '' fool ! ” said the 
Englishman, and shut his window. 

But the windows of the house of Memory, and the win- 
dows of the house of Mercy, are not so easily closed as 
windows of glass and wood. They fly open unexpect- 
edly ; they rattle in the night ; they must be nailed up. 
Mr. The Englishman had tried nailing them, but had not 
driven the nails quite home. So he passed but a disturbed 
evening and a worse night. 

By nature a good-tempered man ? No ; very little gen- 
tleness, confounding the quality with weakness. Fierce 
and wrathful when crossed ? Very, and stupendously 
unreasonable. Moody ? Exceedingly so. Vindictive ? 
Well ; he had had scowling thoughts that he would for- 
mally curse his daughter, as he had seen it done on the 
stage. But remembering that the real Heaven is some 
paces removed from the mock one in the great chandelier 
of the Theatre, he had given that up. 

And he had come abroad to be rid of his repudiated 
daughter for the rest of his life. And here he was. 

At bottom, it was for this reason, more than for any 
other, that Mr. The Englishman took it extremely ill that 
Corporal Theophile should be so devoted to little Bebelle, 
the child at the Barber’s shop. In an unlucky moment he 
had chanced to say to himself, Why, confound the fel- 
low, he is not her father ! ” There was a sharp sting in 
the speech, which ran into him suddenly, and put him in 
a worse mood. So he had National Participled the un- 
conscious Corporal with most hearty emphasis, and had 
made up his mind to think no more about such a mounte- 
bank. 

But it came to pass that the Corporal was not to bo 
dismissed. If he had known the most delicate fibres of 


382 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


the Englishman's mind, instead of knowing nothing on 
earth about him, and if he had been the most obstinate 
Corporal in the Grand Army of France, instead of being 
the most obliging, he could not have planted himself with 
more determined immovability plump in the midst of all 
the Englishman's thoughts. Not only so, but he seemed 
to be always in his view. Mr. The Englishman had but 
to look out of window, to look upon the Corporal with 
little Bebelle. He had but to go for a walk, and there 
was the Corporal walking with Bebelle. He had but 
to come home again, disgusted, and the Corporal and 
Bebelle were at home before him. If he looked out 
at his back windows early in the morning, the Corporal 
was in the Barber's back yard, washing and dressing and 
brushing Bebelle. If he took refuse at his front win- 
dows, the Corporal brought his breakfast out into the 
Place, and shared it there with Bebelle. Always Cor- 
poral and always Bebelle. Never Corporal without Be- 
belle. Never Bebelle without Corporal. 

Mr. The Englishman was not particularly strong in the 
French language as a means of oral communication, 
though he read it very well. It is with languages as 
with people, — when you only know them by sight, you 
are apt to mistake them ; you must be on speaking terms 
before you can be said to have established an acquaint- 
ance. 

For this reason, Mr. The Englishman had to gird up 
his loins considerably before he could bring himself to 
the point of exchanging ideas with Madame Bouclet on 
the subject of this Corporal and this Bebelle. But Ma- 
dame Bouclet looking in apologetically one morning to 
remark, that, 0 Heaven ! she was in a state of desolation 
because the lamp-maker had not sent home that lamp 
confided to him to repair, but that truly he was a lamp- 
maker against whom the whole world shrieked out, Mr. 
The Englishman seized the occasion. 

“ Madame, that baby — " 

Pardon, monsieur. That lamp." 

'' No, no, that little girl." 

But, pardon ! " said Madame Bouclet, angling for a 
dew, one cannot light a little girl, or send her to be 
repaired T " 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


383 


The little girl — at the house of the barber.^^ 

“ Ah-h-h ! cried Madame Bouclet, suddenly catching 
the idea with her delicate little line and rod. ‘‘Little 
Bebelle ? Yes, yes, yes I And her friend the Corporal ? 
Yes, yes, yes, yes I So genteel of him, — is it not ? 

“ He is not — ? 

“Not at all ; not at all 1 He is not one of her rela- 
tions. Not at all I 
“ Why, then, he — 

“ Perfectly I ” cried Madame Bouclet, “ you are right, 
monsieur. It is so genteel of him. The less relation, 
the more genteel. As you say.^^ 

“ Is she — ? 

“ The child of the barber Madame Bouclet whisked 
up her skilful little line and rod again. “Not at all, 
not at all I She is the child of — in a word, of no one.'^ 

“ The wife of the barber, then — ? ” 

“ Indubitably. As you say. The wife of the barber 
receives a small stipend to take care of her. So much by 
the month. Eh, then I It is without doubt very little, 
for we are all poor here.^^ 

“ You are not poor, madame.’^ 

“As to my lodgers, replied Madame Bouclet, with a 
smiling and a gracious bend of her head, “ no. As to all 
things else, so-so. 

“ You flatter me, madame.^^ 

“ Monsieur, it is you who flatter me in living here.^^ 
Certain fishy gasps on Mr. The Englishman's part de- 
noting that he was about to resume his subject under 
difficulties, Madame Bouclet observed him closely, and 
whisked up her delicate line and rod again with trium- 
phant success. 

“ 0 no, monsieur, certainly not. The wife of the bar- 
ber is not cruel to the poor child, but she is careless. 
Her health is delicate, and she sits all day, looking out 
at window. Consequently, when the Corporal first came, 
the poor little Bebelle was much neglected.^' 

“ It is a curious — ” began Mr. The Englishman. 

“ Name ? That Bebelle ? Again, you are right, mon- 
sieur. But it is a playful name for Gabrielle.^^ 

“ And so the child is a mere fancy of the CorporaPs ? 
said Mr. The Englishman, in a gruffly disparaging tone 
of voice. 


384 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


Eh, well I returned Madame Bouclet, with a plead- 
ing shrug : one must love something. Human nature 
is weak.^^ 

(‘‘Devilish weak,’^ muttered the Englishman, in his 
own language.) 

“And the Corporal, pursued Madame Bouclet, “be- 
ing billeted at the barber’s, — where he will probably 
remain a long time, for he is attached to the General, — 
and finding the poor unowned child in need of being 
loved, and finding himself in need of loving, — why, there 
you have it all, you see ! ” 

Mr. The Englishman accepted this interpretation of 
the matter with an indifferent grace, and observed to 
himself, in an injured manner, when he was again alone : 
“ I should n’t mind it so much, if these people were not 
such a” — National Participled — “ sentimental people ! ” 

There was a Cemetery outside the town, and it hap- 
pened ill for the reputation of the Vaubanois, in this sen- 
timental connection, that he took a walk there that same 
afternoon. To be sure there were some wonderful things 
in it (from the Englishman’s point of view), and of a 
certainty in all Britain you would have found nothing 
like it. Not to mention the fanciful flourishes of hearts 
and crosses, in wood and -iron, that were planted all 
over the place, making it look very like a Firework- 
ground, where a most splendid pyrotechnic display might 
be expected after dark, there were so many wreaths upon 
the graves, embroidered, as it might be, “ To my mother,” 
“To my daughter,” “To my father,” “To my brother,” 
“To my sister,” “ To my friend,” and those many wreaths 
were in so manj’- stages of elaboration and decay, from the 
wreath of yesterday, all fresh color and bright beads, to 
the wreath of last year, a poor mouldering wisp of straw ! 
There were so many little gardens and grottos made upon 
graves, in so many tastes, with plants and shells and 
plaster figures and porcelain pitchers, and so many odds 
and ends ! There were so many tributes of remembrance 
hanging up, not to be discriminated by the closest inspec- 
tion from little round waiters, whereon were depicted in 
glowing hues either a lady or a gentleman with a white 
pocket-handkerchief out of all proportion, leaning, in a 
state of the most faultless mourning and most profound 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


385 


affliction, on the most architectural and gorgeous urn ! 
There were so many surviving wives who had put their 
names on the tombs of their deceased husbands, with a 
blank for the date of their own departure from this weary 
world ; and there were so many surviving husbands who 
had rendered the same homage to their deceased wives ; 
and out of the number there must have been so many who 
had long ago married again I In fine, there was so much 
in the place that would have seemed mere frippery to a 
stranger, save for the consideration that the lightest pa- 
per fiower that lay upon the poorest heap of earth was 
never touched by a rude hand, but perished there, a sa- 
cred thing ! 

‘‘Nothing of the solemnity of Death here,^’ Mr. The 
Englishman had been going to say, when this last consid- 
eration touched him with a mild appeal, and on the whole 
he walked out without saying it. “ But these people 
are,’’ he insisted, by way of compensation, when he was 
well outside the gate, “they are so” — Participled — 
“ sentimental ! ” 

His way back lay by the military gymnasium-ground. 
And there he passed the Corporal glibly instructing 
young soldiers how to swing themselves over rapid and 
deep watercourses on their way to Glory, by means of a 
rope, and himself deftly plunging off a platform, and fly- 
ing a hundred feet or two, as an encouragement to them 
to begin. And there he also passed, perched on a crown- 
ing eminence (probably by the Corporal’s careful hands), 
the small Bebelle, with her round eyes wide open, sur- 
veying the proceeding like a wondering sort of blue and 
white bird. 

“ If that child was to die,” this was his reflection as 
he turned his back and went his way, — “ and it would 
almost serve the fellow right for making such a fool of 
himself, — I suppose we should have /lim sticking up a 
wreath and a waiter in that fantastic burying-ground.” 

Nevertheless, after another early morning or two of 
looking out of window, he strolled down into the Place, 
when the Corporal and Bebelle were walking there, and, 
touching his hat to the Corporal (an immense achieve- 
ment), wished him Good Day. 

“ Good day, monsieur.” 


586 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


This is a rather pretty child you have here/’ said 
Mr. The Englishman, taking her chin in his hand, and 
looking down into her astonished blue eyes. 

Monsieur, she is a very pretty child,” returned the 
Corporal, with a stress on his polite correction of the 
phrase. 

And good ? ” said the Englishman. 

And very good. Poor little thing I ” 

** Hah ! ” The Englishman stooped down and patted 
her cheek, not without awkwardness, as if he were going 
too far in his conciliation. “ And what is this medal 
round your neck, my little one ? ” 

Bebelle having no other reply on her lips than her 
chubby right fist, the Corporal offered his services as 
interpreter. 

Monsieur demands, what is this, Bebelle ? ” 

** It is the Holy Virgin,” said Bebelle. 

“ And who gave it you ? ” asked the Englishman. 

Theophile.” 

And who is Thdophile ? ” 

Bebelle broke into a laugh, laughed merrily and heart- 
ily, clapped her chubby hands, and beat her little feet on 
the stone pavement of the Place. 

** He does n’t know Theophile I Why, he does n’t 
know any one ! He does n’t know anything I ” Then, 
sensible of a small solecism in her manners, Bebelle 
twisted her right hand in a leg of the Corporal’s Bloomer 
trousers, and, laying her cheek against the place, kissed 
it. 

Monsieur Thdophile, I believe ? ” said the English- 
man to the Corporal. 

It is I, monsieur.” 

'' Permit me.” Mr. The Englishman shook him heart- 
ily by the hand and turned away. But he took it mighty 
ill that old Monsieur Mutuel in his patch of sunlight, 
upon whom he came as he turned, should pull off his cap 
to him with a look of pleased approval. And he mut- 
tered, in his own tongue, as he returned the salutation, 
** Well, walnut-shell! And what business is it of yours?^^ 
Mr. The Englishman went on for many weeks passing 
but disturbed evenings and worse nights, and constantly 
experiencing that those aforesaid windows in the houses 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


387 


of Memory and Mercy rattled after dark, and that he had 
very imperfectly nailed them up. Likewise, he went on 
for many weeks daily improving the acquaintance of the 
Corporal and Bebelle. That is to say, he took Bebelle 
by the chin, and the Corporal by the hand, and ofiered 
Bebelle sous and the Corporal cigars, and even got the 
length of changing pipes with the Corporal and kissing 
Bebelle. But he did it all in a shamefaced way, and al- 
ways took it extremely ill that Monsieur Mutuel in his 
patch of sunlight should note what he did. Whenever 
that seemed to be the case, he always growled in his own 
tongue, “ There you are again, walnut-shell I What busi- 
ness is it of yours? 

In a word, it had become the occupation of Mr. The 
Englishman's life to look after the Corporal and little Be- 
belle, and to resent old Monsieur MutueFs looking after 
him, — an occupation only varied by a fire in the town one 
windy night, and much passing of water-buckets from 
hand to hand (in which the Englishman rendered good 
service), and much beating of drums, — when all of a 
sudden the Corporal disappeared. 

Next, all of a sudden, Bebelle disappeared. 

She had been visible a few days later than the Corpo- 
ral, — sadly deteriorated as to washing and brushing, — 
but she had not spoken when addressed by Mr. The Eng- 
lishman, and had looked scared, and had run away. And 
now it would seem that she had run away for good. 
And there lay the Great Place under the windows, bare 
and barren. 

In his shamefaced and constrained way, Mr. The Eng- 
lishman asked no question of any one, but watched from 
his front windows, and watched from his back windows, 
and lingered about the Place, and peeped in at the Bar- 
ber’s shop, and did all this and much more with a whis- 
tling and tune-humming pretence of not missing anything, 
until one afternoon when Monsieur MutuePs patch of sun- 
light was in shadow, and when, according to all rule and 
precedent, he had no right whatever to bring his red rib- 
bon out of doors, behold here he was, advancing with his 
cap already in his hand twelve paces olf ! 

Mr. The Englishman had got as far into his usual objur- 
gation as, What bu — si — ” when he checked himself. 


388 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


“Ah, it is sad, it is sad I Helas, it is unhappy, it is 
sad I Thus old Monsieur Mutuel, shaking his gray 
head. 

“What busin — at least, I would say, what do you 
mean, Monsieur Mutuel ? ’’ 

“ Our Corporal. Helas, our dear Corporal 1 

“ What has happened to him ? ’’ 

“You have not heard ? 

“ No.^' 

“ At the fire. But he was so brave, so ready. Ah, 
too brave, too ready I ” 

“May the Devil carry you away I the Englishman 
broke in impatiently ; “I beg your pardon, — I mean me, 
— I am not accustomed to speak French, — go on, will 
you ? 

“ And a falling beam — 

“ Good God ! ’’ exclaimed the Englishman. “ It was 
a private soldier who was killed ? ” 

“No. A Corporal, the same Corporal, our dear Cor- 
poral. Beloved by all his comrades. The funeral cere- 
mony was touching, — penetrating. Monsieur The Eng- 
lishman, your eyes fill with tears. 

“ What bu — si — ’’ 

“ Monsieur The Englishman, I honor those emotions. 
I salute you with profound respect. I will not obtrude 
myself upon your noble heart.^^ 

Monsieur Mutuel, — a gentleman in every thread of 
his cloudy linen, under whose wrinkled hand every grain 
in the quarter of an ounce of poor snuff in his poor little 
tin box became a gentleman's property, — Monsieur Mu- 
tuel passed on, with his cap in his hand. 

“ I little thought," said the Englishman, after walking 
for several minutes, and more than once blowing his nose, 
“when I was looking round that Cemetery — I '11 go 
there ! " 

Straight he went there, and when he came within the 
gate he paused, considering whether he should ask at 
the lodge for some direction to the grave. But he was 
less than ever in a mood for asking questions, and he 
thought, “ I shall see something on it to know it by." 

^ In search of the Corporal's grave he went softly on, up 
this walk and down that, peering in, among the crosses 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


389 


and hearts and columns and obelisks and tombstones, for 
a recently disturbed spot. It troubled him now to tliink 
how many dead there were in the cemetery, — he had 
not thought them a tenth part so numerous before, — and 
alter he had walked and sought for some time, he said to 
himself, as he struck down a new vista of tombs, “ I 
might suppose that every one was dead but 

Not every one. A live child was lying on the ground 
asleep. Truly he had found something on the CorporaTs' 
grave to know it by, and the something was Bebelle. 

With such a loving will had the dead soldier’s com- 
rades worked at his resting-place, that it was already a 
neat garden. On the green turf of the garden Bebelle lay 
sleeping, with her cheek touching it. A plain, unpainted 
little wooden Cross was planted in the turf, and her short 
arm embraced this little Cross, as it had many a time em- 
braced the Corporal’s neck. They had put a tiny flag 
(the flag of France) at his head, and a laurel garland. 

Mr. The Englishman took ofl‘ his hat, and stood for a 
while silent. Then, covering his head again, he bent 
down on one knee, and softly roused the child. 

'' Bebelle ! My little one ! ” 

Opening her eyes, on which the tears were still wet, 
Bebelle was at first frightened ; but, seeing who it was, 
she suffered him to take her in his arms, looking stead- 
fastly at him. 

‘‘You must not lie here, my little one. You must 
come with me.” 

“ No, no. I can’t leave Theophile. I want the good 
dear Theophile.” 

“ We will go and seek him, Bebelle. We will go and 
look for him in England. We will go and look for him 
at my daughter’s, Bebelle.” 

“ Shall we find him there ? ” 

“ We shall find the best part of him there. Come with 
me, poor forlorn little one. Heaven is my witness,” said 
the Englishman, in a low voice, as, before he rose, he 
touched the turf above the gentle Corporal’s breast, “that 
I thankfully accept this trust ! ” 

It was a long way for the child to have come unaided. 
She was soon asleep again, with her embrace transferr^ 
to the Englishman’s neck He looked at her worn shoes. 


590 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


and her galled feet, and her tired face, and believed that 
she had come there every day. 

He was leaving the grave with the slumbering Bebelle 
in his arms, when he stopped, looked wistfully down at 
it, and looked wistfully at the other graves around. “ It 
is the innocent custom of the people, said Mr. The Eng- 
lishman, with hesitation. ‘‘ I think I should like to do it. 
No one sees.^' 

Careful not to wake Bebelle as he went, he repaired to 
the lodge where such little tokens of remembrance were 
sold, and bought two wreaths. One, blue and white and 
glistening silver, To my friend ; one of a soberer red 
and black and yellow, “ To my friend. With these he 
went back to the grave, and so down* on one knee again. 
Touching the child’s lips with the brighter wreath, he 
guided her hand to hang it on the Cross ; then hung his 
own wreath there. After all, the wreaths were not far 
out of keeping with the little garden. To my friend. 
To my friend. 

Mr. The Englishman took it very ill when he looked 
round a street corner into the Great Place, carrying Be- 
belle in his arms, that old Mutuel should be there airing 
his red ribbon. He took a world of pains to dodge the 
worthy Mutuel, and devoted a surprising amount of time 
and trouble to skulking into his own lodging like a man 
pursued by Justice. Safely arrived there at last, he made 
Bebelle’s toilet with as accurate a remembrance as he 
could bring to bear upon that work of the way in which 
he had often seen the poor Corporal make it, and, having 
given her to eat and drink, laid her down on his own 
bed. Then he slipped out into the barber’s shop, and 
after a brief interview with the barber’s wife, and a brief 
recourse to his purse and card-case, came back again 
with the whole of Bebelle’s personal property in such a 
very little bundle that it was quite lost under his arm. 

As it was irreconcilable with his whole course and 
character that he should carry Bebelle off in state, or re- 
ceive any compliments or congratulations on that feat, he 
devoted the next day to getting his two portmanteaus 
out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and to com- 
porting himself in every particular as if he were going to 
run away, — except, indeed, that he paid his few debts 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


391 


in the town, and prepared a letter to leave for Madame 
Bouclet, enclosing a sufficient sum of money, in lieu of 
notice. A railway train would come through at mid- 
night, and by that train he would take away Bebelle to 
look for Theophile in England and at his forgiven daugh- 
ter’s. 

At midnight, on a moonlight night, Mr. The English- 
man came creeping forth like a harmless assassin, with 
Bebelle on his breast instead of a dagger. Quiet the 
Great Place, and quiet the never-stirring streets ; closed 
the cafes ; huddled together motionless their billiard- 
balls ; drowsy the guard or sentinel on duty here and 
there ; lulled for the time, by sleep, even the insatiate 
appetite of the Office of Town-dues. 

Mr. The Englishman left the Place behind, and left the 
streets behind, and left the civilian-inhabited town behind, 
and descended down among the military works of Vau- 
ban, hemming all in. As the shadow of the first heavy 
arch and postern fell upon him and was left behind, as 
the shadow of the second heavy arch and postern fell 
upon him and was left behind, as his hollow tramp over 
the first drawbridge was succeeded by a gentler sound, 
as his hollow tramp over the second drawbridge was suc- 
ceeded by a gentler sound, as he overcame the stagnant 
ditches one by one, and passed out where the flowing 
waters were and where the moonlight, so the dark shades 
and the hollow sounds and the un wholesomely locked 
currents of his soul were vanquished and set free. See 
to it, Vaubans of your own hearts, who gird them in with 
triple walls and ditches, and with bolt and chain and bar 
and lifted bridge, — raze those fortifications, and lay 
them level with the all-absorbing dust, before the night 
cometh when no hand can work I 

All went prosperously, and he got into an empty car- 
riage in the train, where he could lay Bebelle on the seat 
over against him, as on a couch, and cover her from head 
to foot with his mantle. He had just drawn himself up 
from perfecting this arrangement, and had just leaned 
back in his own seat contemplating it with great satisfac- 
tion, when he became aware of a curious appearance at 
.he open carriage window, — a ghostly little tin box 
floating up in the moonlight, and hovering there. 


592 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


He leaned forward, and put out his head. Down 
among the rails and wheels and ashes, Monsieur Mutuel, 
red ribbon and all ! 

“ Excuse me. Monsieur The Englishman, said Mon- 
sieur Mutuel, holding up his box at arm’s length, the 
carriage being so high and he so low ; '‘but I shall rev- 
erence the little box forever, if your so generous hand 
will take a pinch from it at parting.” 

Mr. The Englishman reached out of the window before 
complying, and — without asking the old fellow what 
business it was of his — shook hands and said, “ Adieu I 
God bless you ! ” 

“ And, Mr. The Englishman, God bless you I ” cried 
Madame Bouclet, who was also there among the rails 
and wheels and ashes. “ And God will bless you in 
the happiness of the protected child now with you. And 
God will bless you in your own child at home. And God 
will bless you in your own remembrances. And this 
from me I ” 

He had barely time to catch a bouquet from her hand, 
when the train was flying through the night. Round the 
paper that infolded it was bravely written (doubtless by 
the nephew who held the pen of an Angel), “ Homage to 
the friend of the friendless.” 

“ Not bad people, Bebelle ! ” said Mr. The Englishman, 
softly drawing the mantle a little from her sleeping face, 
that he might kiss it, “ though they are so — ” 

Too “ sentimental ” himself at the moment to be able 
to get out that word, he added nothing but a sob, and 
travelled for some miles, through the moonlight, witli his 
hand before his eyes. 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


393 


CHAPTER m. 

HIS WONDERFUL END. 

It will have been, ere now, perceived that I sold the 
foregoing writings. From the fact of their being printed 
in these pages, the inference will, ere now, have been 
drawn by the reader (may I add, the gentle reader ?) that 
I sold them to One who never yet.* 

Having parted with the writings on most satisfactory 
terms, — for, in opening negotiations with the present 
J ournal, was I not placing myself in the hands of One of 
whom it may be said, in the words of Another,f — I re- 
sumed my usual functions. But I too soon discovered 
that peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that 
time. Time had merely took the hair off, leaving an unruf- 
fled expanse within. 

It were superfluous to veil it, — the brow to which I 
allude is my own. 

Yes, over that brow uneasiness gathered like the sable 
wing of the fabled bird, as — as no doubt will be easily 
identified by all right-minded individuals. If not, I am 
unable, on the spur of the moment, to enter into particulars 
of him. The reflection that the writings must now inevita- 
bly get into print, and that He might yet live and meet with 
them, sat like the Hag of Night upon my jaded form. 
The elasticity of my spirits departed. Fruitless was the 
Bottle, whether Wine or Medicine. I had recourse to 
both, and the effect of both upon my system was wither- 
ingly lowering. 

In this state of depression, into which I subsided when 
I first began to revolve what could I ever say if He — 

* The remainder of this complimentary sentence editorially struck 

out. 

t The remainder of this complimentaiy parenthesis editorially struck 
out. 


394 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


the unknown — was to appear in the Coffee-Room and 
demand reparation, I one forenoon in this last November 
received a turn that appeared to be given me by the fin- 
ger of Fate and Conscience, hand in hand. I was alone 
in the Coffee-Room, and had just poked the fire into a 
blaze, and was standing with my back to it, trying 
whether heat would penetrate with soothing influence to 
the Voice within, when a young man in a cap, of an intel- 
ligent countenance, though requiring his hair cut, stood 
before me. 

Mr. Christopher, the Head Waiter? 

“ The same.^^ 

The young man shook his hair out of his vision, — 
which it impeded, — took a packet from his breast, and, 
handing it over to me, said, with his eye (or did I dream ?) 
fixed with a lambent meaning on me, “ The Proofs. 

Although I smelt my coat-tails singeing at the fire, I had 
not the power to withdraw them. The young man put 
the packet in my faltering grasp, and repeated, — let me 
do him the justice to add, with civility : — 

The Proofs. A. Y. R.’^ 

With those words he departed. 

A. Y. R. ? And You Remember. Was that his mean- 
ing ? At Your Risk. Were the letters short for that re- 
minder ? Anticipate Your Retribution. Did they stand 
for that warning ? Outdacious Youth Repent ? But no ; 
for that a 0 was happily wanting, and the vowel here 
was a A. 

I opened the packet, and found that its contents were 
the foregoing writings printed just as the reader (may I 
add, the discerning reader?) peruses them. In vain was 
the reassuring whisper, — A. Y. R., All the Year Round, 
— it could not cancel the Proofs. Too appropriate name. 
The Proofs of my having sold the Writings. 

My wretchedness daily increased. I had not thought 
of the risk I ran, and the defying publicity I put my head 
into, until all was done, and all was in print. Give up 
the money to be off the bargain and prevent the publica- 
tion, I could not. My family was down in the world, 
Christmas was coming on, a brother in the hospital and 
a sister in the rheumatics could not be entirely neglected. 
And it was not only ins in the family that had told on 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


395 


the resources of one unaided Waitering ; outs were not 
wanting. A brother out of a situation, and another 
brother out of money to meet an acceptance, and another 
brother out of his mind, and another brother out at New 
York (not the same, though it might appear so), had 
really and truly brought me to a stand till I could turn 
myself round. I got worse and worse in my meditations, 
constantly reflecting “ The Proofs, and reflecting that 
when Christmas drew nearer, and the Proofs were pub- 
lished, there could be no safety from hour to hour but 
that He might confront me in the Cofiee-Room, and in the 
face of day and his country demand his rights. 

The impressive and unlooked-for catastrophe towards 
which I dimly pointed the reader (shall I add, the highly 
intellectual reader ?) in my first remarks now rapidly 
approaches. 

It was November still, but the last echoes of the Guy 
Foxes had long ceased to reverberate. We was slack, 
— several joints under our average mark, and wine, of 
course, proportionate. So slack had we become at last, 
that Beds Nos. 26, 27, 28, and 31, having took their six 
o’clock dinners, and dozed over their respective pints, 
had drove away in their respective Hansoms for their 
respective Night Mail-Trains and left us empty. 

I had took the evening paper to No. 6 table, — which 
is warm and most to be preferred, — and, lost in the all- 
absorbing topics of the day, had dropped into a slumber. 
I was recalled to consciousness by the well-known inti- 
mation, “ Waiter I ” and replying, Sir I ” found a gen- 
tleman standing at No. 4 table. The reader (shall I add, 
the observant reader ?) will please to notice the locality 
of the gentleman, — at No. 4 table. 

He had one of the new-fangled uncollapsable bags in 
his hand (which I am against, for I don’t see why you 
should n’t collapse, while you are about it, as your fa- 
thers collapsed before you), and he said : — 

** I want to dine, waiter. I shall sleep here to-night.” 

Very good, sir. What will you take for dinner, sir ? ” 

“ Soup, bit of codfish, oyster sauce, and the joint.” 

** Thank you, sir.” 

I rang the chambermaid’s bell ; and Mrs. Pratchett 
marched in, according to custom, demurely carrying a 


396 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


lighted flat candle before her, as if she was one of a long 
public procession, all the other members of which was 
invisible. 

In the mean while the gentleman had gone up to the 
mantel-piece, right in front of the fire, and had laid 
his forehead against the mantel-piece (which it is a low 
one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog), and 
had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and 
lightish ; and when he laid his forehead against the man- 
tel-piece, his hair all fell in a dusty fiuff together over his 
eyes ; and when he now turned round, and lifted up his 
head again, it all fell in a dusty fluft* together over his 
ears. This give him a wild appearance, similar to a 
blasted heath. 

Oh I The chambermaid. Ah I ” He was turning 
something in his mind. ‘‘ To be sure. Yes. I wonH 
go up stairs now, if you will take my bag. It will be 
enough for the present to know my number. — Can you 
give me 24 B ? 

(0 Conscience, what a Adder art thou !) 

Mrs. Pratchett allotted him the room, and took his bag 
to it. He then went back before the fire, and fell a 
biting his nails. 

“ Waiter I biting between the words, ‘‘ give me,^^ 
bite, pen and paper ; and in five minutes,^^ bite, ‘‘ let 
me have, if you please, bite, a,^^ bite, Messenger.’^ 

Unmindful of his waning soup, he wrote and sent ofi* 
six notes before he touched his dinner. Three were City ; 
three West End. The City letters were to Cornhill, Lud- 
gate Hill, and Farringdon Street. The West End let- 
ters were to Great Marlborough Street, New Burlington 
Street, and Piccadilly. Everybody was systematically 
denied at every one of the six places, and there was not 
a vestige of any answer. Our light porter whispered to 
me, when he came back with that report, All Book- 
sellers.^^ 

But before then he had cleared off his dinner, and his 
bottle of wine, fie now — mark the concurrence with 
the document formerly given in full I — knocked a plate 
of biscuits off the table with his agitated elber (but with- 
out breakage), and demanded boiling brandy-and-water. 

Now fully convinced that it was Himself, I perspired 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


397 


with the utmost freedom. When he become flushed with 
the heated stimulant referred to, he again demanded pen 
and paper, and passed the succeeding two hours in pro- 
ducing a manuscript which he put in the fire when com- 
pleted. He then went up to bed, attended by Mrs. 
Pratchett. Mrs. Pratchett (who was aware of my emo- 
tions) told me, on coming down, that she had noticed his 
eye rolling into every corner of the passages and stair- 
case, as if in search of his Luggage, and that, looking 
back as she shut the door of 24 B, she perceived him with 
his coat already thrown olf immersing himself bodily un- 
der the bedstead, like a chimney-sweep before the applica- 
tion of machinery. 

The next day — I forbear the horrors of that night — 
was a very foggy day in our part of London, insomuch 
that it was necessary to light the Coffee-Room gas. We 
was still alone, and no feverish words of mine can do jus- 
tice to the fitfulness of his appearance as he sat at No. 4 
table, increased by there being something wrong with the 
meter. 

Having again ordered his dinner, he went out, and was 
out for the best part of two hours. Inquiring on his 
return whether any of the answers had arrived, and re- 
ceiving an unqualified negative, his instant call was for 
mulligatawny, the cayenne pepper, and orange brandy. 

Feeling that the mortal struggle was now at hand, I 
also felt that I must be equal to him, and with that view 
resolved that whatever he took I would take. Behind 
my partition, but keeping my eye on him over the cur- 
tain, I therefore operated on Mulligatawny, Cayenne 
Pepper, and Orange Brandy. And at a later period of 
the day, when he again said, ‘‘ Orange Brandy,^^ I said 
so too, in a lower tone, to George, my Second Lieutenant 
(my First was absent on leave), who acts between me and 
the bar. 

Throughout that awful day he walked about the Coffee- 
Room continually. Often he came close up to my parti- 
tion, and then his eyes rolled within,^too evidently in 
search of any signs of his Luggage. Half past six came, 
and I laid his cloth. He ordered a bottle of Old Brown. 
I likewise ordered a bottle of Old Brown. He drank his. 
I drank mine (as nearly as my duties would permit) 


398 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


glass for glass against his. He topped with coffee and a 
small glass. I topped with coffee and a small glass. He 
dozed. I dozed. At last, Waiter I ’’ — and he ordered 
his bill. The moment was now at hand when we two 
must be locked in the deadly grapple. 

Swift as the arrow from the bow, I had formed my res- 
olution ; in other words I had hammered it out between 
nine and nine. It was, that I would be the first to open 
up the subject with a full acknowledgment, and would 
offer any gradual settlement within my power. He paid 
his bill (doing what was right by attendance) with his 
eye rolling about him to the last for any tokens of his 
Luggage. One only time our gaze then met, with the 
lustrous fixedness (I believe I am correct in imputing 
that character to it?) of the well-known Basilisk. The 
decisive moment had arrived. 

With a tolerable steady hand, though with humility, I 
laid The Proofs before him. 

‘‘ Gracious Heavens I he cries out, leaping up, and 
catching hold of his hair. What ’s this ? Print I ’’ 

Sir,^^ I replied, in a calming voice, and bending for- 
ward, I humbly acknowledge to being the unfortunate 
cause of it. But I hope, sir, that when you have heard 
the circumstances explained, and the innocence of my 
intentions — 

To my amazement, I was stopped short by his catching 
me in both his arms, and pressing me to his breastbone ; 
where I must confess to my face (and particular, nose) 
having undergone some temporary vexation from his 
wearing his coat buttoned high up, and his buttons being 
uncommon hard. 

“ Ha, ha, ha 1 he cries, releasing me with a wild 
laugh, and grasping my hand. “ What is your name, 
my Benefactor ? 

'^My name, sir^^ (I was crumpled, and puzzled to 
make him out), “ is Christopher ; and I hope, sir, that, 
as such, when you 've heard my ex — 

“ In print ! he exclaims again, dashing the proofs 
over and over as if he was bathing in them. ‘‘ In print ! I 
0 Christopher ! Philanthropist ! Nothing can recom- 
pense you, — but what sum of money would be accepta- 
ble to you ? ’ 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


399 


I had drawn a step back from him, or 1 should have 
suffered from his buttons again. 

‘‘ Sir, I assure you I have been already well paid, 
and — 

“No, no, Christopher! Don’t talk like that I What 
sum of money would be acceptable to you, Christopher ? 
Would you find twenty pounds acceptable, Christopher ? ” 

However great my surprise, 1 naturally found words 
to say, “ Sir, I am not aware that the man was ever yet 
born without more than the average amount of water on 
the brain as would not find twenty pound acceptable. 
But — extremely obliged to you, sir, I ’m sure ; for he 
had tumbled it out of his purse and crammed it in my 
hand in two bank-notes ; “ but I could wish to know, sir, 
if not intruding, how I have merited this liberality ? 

“ Know then, my Christopher,’^ he says, “ that from 
boyhood’s hour I have unremittingly and unavailingly en- 
deavored to get into print. Know, Christopher, that all 
the Booksellers alive — and several dead — have refused 
to put me into print. Know, Christopher, that I have writ- 
ten unprinted Kearns. But they shall be read to you, my 
friend and brother. You sometimes have a holiday ? ” 

Seeing the great danger I was in, I had the presence 
of mind to answer, “ Never 1 ” To make it more final, I 
added, “ Never I Not from the cradle to the grave.” 

“ Well,” says he, thinking no more about that, and 
chuckling at his proofs again. “ But I am in print ! The 
first flight of ambition emanating from my father’s lowly 
cot is realized at length ! The golden bow,” — he was 
getting on, — “ struck by the magic hand, has emitted a 
complete and perfect sound 1 When did this happen, my 
Christopher ? ” 

“ Which happen, sir ? ” 

“ This,” — he held it out at arm’s length to admire it, 
— “ this Per-rint.” 

When I had given him my detailed account of it, he 
grasped me by the hand again, and said : — 

“ Dear Christopher, it should be gratifying to you to 
know that you are an instrument in the hands of Destiny. 
Because you are.” 

A passing Something of a melancholy cast -put it into 
tny head to shake it, and to say, “ Perhaps we all are.” 

“ I don’t mean that,” he answered ; “ I don’t take 


400 


SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE. 


that wide range ; I confine myself to the special case. 
Observe me well, my Christopher I Hopeless of getting 
rid, through any efibrt of my own, of any of the manu- 
scripts among my Luggage, — all of which, send them 
where I would, were always coming back to me, — it is 
now some seven years since I left that Luggage here, on 
the desperate chance, either that the too, too faithful 
manuscripts would come back to me no more, or that 
some one less accursed than I might give them to the 
world. You follow me, my Christopher ? 

Pretty well, sir.^^ I followed him so far as to judge 
that he had a weak head, and that the Orange, the Boil- 
ing, and Old Brown combined was beginning to tell. 
(The Old Brown, being heady, is best adapted to sea- 
soned cases.) 

“ Years elapsed, and those compositions slumbered in 
dust. At length. Destiny, choosing her agent from all 
mankind, sent You here, Christopher, and lo ! the Casket 
was burst asunder, and the Giant was free I 

He made hay of his hair after he said this, and he 
stood a-tiptoe. 

But,’’ he reminded himself in a state of great excite- 
ment, ‘‘ we must sit up all night, my Christopher. I 
must correct these Proofs for the press. Fill all the ink- 
stands, and bring me several new pens.” 

He smeared himself and he smeared the Proofs, the 
night through, to that degree that when Sol give him 
warning to depart (in a four-wheeler), few could have 
said which was them, and which was him, and which was 
blots. His last instructions was, that I should instantly 
run and take his corrections to the office of the present 
Journal. I did so. They most likely will not appear in 
print, for I noticed a message being brought round from 
Bcauford Printing House, while I was a throwing this con- 
cluding statement on paper, that the ole resources of that 
establishment was unable to make out what they meant. 
Upon which a certain gentleman in company, as I will 
not more particularly name, — but of whom it will be 
sufficient to remark, standing on the broad basis of a 
wave-girt isle, that whether we regard him in the light 
of, — * laughed, and put the corrections in the fire. 

* The remainder of this complimentary parenthesis editorially struck 
out. 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


IN TWO CHAPTERS. 


CHAPTER L 

HOW MRS. LIRRIPER CARRIED ON THE BUSINESS. 

Whoever would begin to be worried with letting Lodg- 
ings that was n’t a lone woman with a living to get is a 
thing inconceivable to me my dear, excuse the familiarity 
but it comes natural to me in my own little room when 
wishing to open my mind to those that I can trust and I 
should be truly thankful if they were all mankind but 
such is not so, for have but a Furnished bill in the win- 
dow and your watch on the mantel-piece and farewell to 
it if you turn your back for but a second however gen- 
tlemanly the manners, nor is being of your own sex any 
safeguard as I have reason in the form of sugar-tongs to 
know, for that lady (and a fine woman she was) got me 
to run for a glass of water on the plea of going to be 
confined, which certainly turned out true but it was in 
the Station-House. 

Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand — situated 
midway between the City and St. James’s and within five 
minutes’ walk of the principal places of public amusement 
— is my address. I have rented this house many years 
as the parish rate-books will testify and I could wish my 
landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself, but no 
bless you not a half a pound of paint to save his life nor 
so much my dear as a tile upon the roof though on your 
bended knees. 

My dear you never have found Number Eighty-one 
Norfolk Street Strand advertised in Bradshaw’s Railway 
Gruide and with the blessing of Heaven you never will or 
shall so find it. Some there are who do not think it low- 
ering themselves to make their names that cheap and 


402 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


even going the lengths of a portrait of the house not like 
it with a blot in every window and a coach and four at 
the door, but what will suit Wozenham^s lower down on 
the other side of the way will not suit me, Miss Wozen- 
ham having her opinions and me having mine, though 
when it comes to systematic underbidding capable of bO' 
ing proved on oath in a court of justice and taking the 
form of ‘‘If Mrs. Lirriper names eighteen shillings a week, 
I name fifteen and six ’’ it then comes to a settlement 
between yourself and your conscience supposing for the 
sake of argument your name to be Wozenham which I am 
well aware it is not or my opinion of you would be greatly 
lowered, and as to airy bedrooms and a night-porter in 
constant attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms 
being stufiy and the porter stuff. 

It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirriper got 
married at St. Clement’s Danes where I now have a sit- 
ting in a very pleasant pew with genteel company and 
my own hassock and being partial to evening service not 
too crowded. My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure 
of a man with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a 
musical instrument made of honey and steel, but he had 
ever been a free liver being in the commercial travelling 
line and travelling what he called a limekiln road — “a 
dry road, Emma my dear,” my poor Lirriper says to me 
“ where I have to lay the dust with one drink or another 
all day long and half the night, and it wears me Emma ” 
— and this led to his running through a good deal and 
might have run through the turnpike too when that dread- 
ful horse that never would stand still for a single instant 
set ofi‘, but for its being night and the gate shut and 
consequently took his wheel my poor Lirriper and the gig 
smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was 
a handsome figure of a man and a man with a jovial heart 
and a sweet temper, but if they had come up then they 
never could have given you the mellowness of his voice, 
and indeed I consider photographs wanting in mellow- 
ness as a general rule and making you look like a new- 
ploughed field. 

My poor Lirriper being behindhand with the world and 
being buried at Hatfield church in Hertfordshire, not that 
it was his native place but that he had a liking for the 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


403 


Salisbury Arms where we went upon our wedding-day 
and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was, 1 
went round to the creditors and 1 says ‘‘ Gentlemen I am 
acquainted with the fact that I am not answerable for my 
late husband’s debts but I wish to pay them for I am his 
lawful wife and his good name is dear to me. I am going 
into the Lodgings gentlemen as a business and if I pros- 
per every farthing that my late husband owed shall be 
paid for the sake of the love I bore him, by this right 
hand.” It took a long time to do but it was done, and 
the silver cream-jug which is between ourselves and the 
bed and the mattress in my room up stairs (or it would 
have found legs so sure as ever the Furnished bill was 
up) being presented by the gentlemen engraved ‘‘ To 
Mrs. Lirriper a mark of grateful respect for her honorable 
conduct ” gave me a turn which was too much for my 
feelings, till Mr. Betley which at that time had the par- 
lors and loved his joke says “ Cheer up Mrs. Lirriper, you 
should feel as if it was only your christening and they 
were your godfathers and godmothers which did promise 
for you.” And it brought me round, and I don’t mind 
confessing to you my dear that I then put a sandwich 
and a drop of sherry in a little basket and went down to 
Hatfield churchyard outside the coach and kissed my 
hand and laid it with a kind of a proud and swelling 
love on my husband’s grave, though bless you it had 
taken me so long to clear his name that my wedding ring 
was worn quite fine and smooth when I laid it on the 
green green waving grass. 

I am an old woman now and my good looks are gone 
but that ’s me my dear over the plate-warmer and consid- 
ered like in the times when you used to pay two guineas 
on ivory and took your chance pretty much how you 
came out, which made you very careful how you left it 
about afterwards because people were turned so red and 
uncomfortable by mostly guessing it was somebody else 
quite different, and there was once a certain person that 
had put his money in a hop business that came in one 
morning to pay his rent and his respects being the second 
floor that would have taken it down from its hook and put 
it in his breast-pocket — you understand my dear — for 
the L, he says, of the original — only there was no mel 


404 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


lowness in his voice and I would n’t let him, but hia 
opiiilon of it you may gather from his saying to it ‘‘Speak 
to me Emma! ” which was far from a rational observation 
no doubt but still a tribute to its being a likeness, and I 
think myself it was like me when I was young and wore 
that sort of stays. 

But it was about the Lodgings that I was intending to 
hold forth and certainly I ought to know something of 
the business having been in it so long, for it was early in 
the second year of my married life that I lost my poor 
Lirripor and I set up at Islington directly afterwards and 
afterwards came here, being two houses and eight-and- 
thirty years and some losses and a deal of experience. 

Girls are your first trial after fixtures and they try you 
even worse than what I call the Wandering Christians, 
though why they should roam the earth looking for bills 
and then coming in and viewing the apartments and stick- 
ling about terms and never at all wanting them or dream- 
ing of taking them being already provided, is a mystery 
I should be thankful to have explained if by any miracle 
it could be. It ’s wonderful they live so long and thrive 
so on it but I suppose the exercise makes it healthy, 
knocking so much and going from house to house and up 
and down stairs all day, and then their pretending to be 
so particidar and punctual is a most astonishing thing, 
looking at their watches and saying “ Could you give me 
the refusal of the rooms till twenty minutes past eleven 
the day after to-morrow in the forenoon, and supposing it 
to be considered essential by my friend from the country 
could there be a small iron bedstead put in the little room 
upon the stairs ? ” Why when I was new to it my dear 
I used to consider before I promised and to make my 
mind anxious with calculations and to get quite wearied 
out with disappointments, but now I says “ Certainly by 
all means ” well knowing it ’s a Wandering Christian and 
I shall hear no more about it, indeed by this time I know 
most of the Wandering Christians by sight as well as 
they know me, it being the habit of each individual re- 
volving round London in that capacity to come back 
about twice a year, and it ’s very remarkable that it run's 
in families and the children grow up to it, but even were 
it otherwise I should no sooner hear of the friend from 


MES. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


405 


the country which is a certain sign than I should nod and 
say to myself You Ye a Wandering Christian, though 
whether they are (as I have heard) persons of small prop- 
erty with a taste for regular employment and frequent 
change of scene I cannot undertake to tell you. 

Girls as I was beginning to remark are one of your first 
and your lasting troubles, being like your teeth which 
begin with convulsions and never cease tormenting you 
from the time you cut them till they cut you, and then 
you don't want to part with them which seems hard but 
we must all succumb or buy artificial, and even where 
you get a will nine times out of ten you 'll get a dirty 
face with it and naturally lodgers do not like good soci- 
ety to be shown in with a smear of black across the nose 
or a smudgy eyebrow. Where they pick the black up is 
a mystery I cannot solve, as in the case of the willingest 
girl that ever came into a house half-starved poor thing, 
a girl so willing that I called her Willing Sophy down 
upon her knees scrubbing early and late and ever cheer- 
ful but always smiling with a black face. And I says to 
Sophy ‘‘ Now Sophy my good girl have a regular day for 
your stoves and keep the width of the Airy between 
yourself and the blacking and do not brush your hair 
with the bottoms of the saucepans and do not meddle 
with the snuffs of the candles and it stands to reason 
that it can no longer be " yet there it was and always on 
her nose, which turning up and being broad at the end 
seemed to boast of it and caused warning from a steady 
gentleman and excellent lodger with breakfast by the 
week but a little irritable and use of a sitting-room when 
required, his words being Mrs. Lirriper I have ar- 
rived at the point of admitting that the Black is a man 
and a brother, but only in a natural form and when it 
can't be got off." Well consequently I put poor Sophy 
on to other work and forbid her answering the do6r or 
answering a bell on any account but she was so unfor- 
tunately willing that nothing would stop her flying up the 
kitchen stairs whenever a bell was heard to tingle. I 
put it to her “ 0 Sophy Sophy for goodness' goodness' 
sake where does it come from ? " To which that poor 
unlucky willing mortal bursting out crying to see me so 
vexed replied I took a deal of black into me ma'am 


406 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


when I was a small child being much neglected and I 
think it must be, that it works out,^^ so it continuing to 
work out of that poor thing and not having another fault 
to find with her I says Sophy ‘‘ what do you seriously 
think of my helping you away to New South Wales 
where it might not be noticed Nor did I ever repent 
the money which was well spent, for she married the 
ship^s cook on the voyage (himself a Mulotter) and did 
well and lived happy, and so far as ever I heard it was 
not noticed in a new state of society to her dying day. 

In what way Miss Wozenham lower down on the other 
side of the way reconciled it to her feelings as a lady 
(which she is not) to entice Mary Anne Perkinsop from 
my service is best known to herself, I do not know and 
I do not wish to know how opinions are formed at Wo- 
zenham^s on any point. But Mary Anne Perkinsop al- 
though I behaved handsomely to her and she behaved 
unhandsomely to me was worth her weight in gold as 
overawing lodgers without driving them away, for lodgers 
would be far more sparing of their bells with Mary Anne 
than I ever knew them be with Maid or Mistress, which 
is a great triumph especially when accompanied with a 
cast in the eye and a bag of bones, but it was the stead- 
iness of her way with them through her father’s having 
failed in Pork. It was Mary Anne’s looking so respecta- 
ble in her person and being so strict in her spirits that 
conquered the tea-and-sugarest gentleman (for he weighed 
them both in a pair of scales every morning) that I have 
ever had to deal with and no lamb grew meeker, still it 
afterwards came round to me that Miss Wozenham hap- 
pening to pass and seeing Mary Anne take in the milk 
of a milkman that made free in a rosy-faced way (I think 
no worse of him) with every girl in the street but was 
quite frozen up like the statue at Charing Cross by her, 
saw Mary Anne’s value in the lodging business and went 
as high as one pound per quarter more, consequently 
Mary Anne with not a word betwixt us says “ If you will 
provide yourself Mrs. Lirriper in a month from this day 2 
have already done the same,” which hurt me and I said 
BO, and she then hurt me more by insinuating that her 
father having failed in Pork had laid her open to it. 

My dear I do assure you it’s a harassing thing to 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


407 


know what kind of girls to give the preference tc, for if 
they are lively they get belPd off their legs and if they 
are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in complaints and 
if they are sparkling-eyed they get made love to and if 
they are smart in their persons they try on your Lodgers^ 
bonnets and if they are musical I defy you to keep them 
away from bands and organs, and allowing for any differ- 
ence you like in their heads their heads will be always 
out of window just the same. And then what the gentle* 
men like in girls the ladies don’t, which is fruitful hot 
water for all parties, and then there ’s temper though 
such a temper as Caroline Maxey’s I hope not often. A 
good-looking black-eyed girl was Caroline and a comely 
made girl to your cost when she did break out and laid 
about her, as took place first and last through a new-mar- 
ried couple come to see London in the first floor and the 
lady very high and it was supposed not liking the good 
looks of Caroline having none of her own to spare, but 
anyhow she did try Caroline though that was no excuse. 
So one afternoon Caroline comes down into the kitchen 
flushed and flashing, and she says to me '' Mrs. Lirriper 
that woman in the first has aggravated me past bearing,” 
I says “ Caroline keep your temper,” Caroline says with 
a curdling laugh, ‘‘Keep my temper? You’re right 
Mrs. Lirriper, so I will. Capital I) her I ” bursts out 
Caroline (you might have struck me into the centre of the 
earth with a feather when she said it) “ I’ll give her a 
touch of the temper that / keep I ” Caroline downs with 
her hair, my dear, screeches and rushes up stairs I follow- 
ing as fast as my trembling legs could bear me, but be- 
fore I got into the room the dinner-cloth and pink and 
white service all, dragged off upon the floor with a crash 
and the new-married couple on their backs in the fire- 
grate, him with the shovel and tongs and a dish of cu- 
cumber across him and a mercy it was summer-time. 
“Caroline” I says “be calm,” but she catches off my 
cap and tears it in her teeth as she passes me, then 
pounces on the new-married lady makes her a bundle of 
ribbons takes her by the two ears and knocks the back 
of her head upon the carpet Murder screaming all the 
time Policemen running down the street and Wozenham’s 
windows (judge of my feelings when I came to know it) 


408 


MRS. LIRKIPER’S LODGINGS. 


thrown up and Miss Wozenham calling out from the 
balcony with crocodile’s tears “ It ’s Mrs. Lirriper been 
overcharging somebody to madness — she ’ll be murdered 
— I always thought so — Pleeseman save her ! ” My 
dear four of them and Caroline behind the chiffon iere 
attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fight- 
ing with her double fists, and down and up and up and 
down and dreadful ! But I could n’t bear to see the poor 
young creature roughly handled and her hair torn when 
they got the better of her, and I says “ Gentlemen Police- 
men pray remember that her sex is the sex of your moth- 
ers and sisters and your sweethearts, and God bless them 
and you ! ” And there she was sitting down on the 
ground handcuffed, taking breath against the skirting- 
board and them cool with their coats in strips, and all 
she says was “ Mrs. Lirriper I am sorry as ever I touched 
you, for you ’re a kind motherly old thing,” and it made 
me think that I had often wished I had been a mother in- 
deed and how would my heart have felt if I had been the 
mother of that girl 1 Well you know it turned out at the 
Police-office that she had done it before, and she had her 
clothes away and was sent to prison, and when she was 
to come out I trotted off to the gate in the evening with 
just a morsel of jelly in that little basket of mine to give 
her a mite of strength to face the world again, and there 
I met with a very decent mother waiting for her son 
through bad company and a stubborn one he was with 
his half-boots not laced. So out came Caroline and I 
says Caroline come along with me and sit down under 
the wall where it ’s retired and eat a little trifle that I 
have brought with me to do you good ” and she throws 
her arms round my neck and says sobbing ‘‘ 0 why were 
you never a mother when there are such mothers as there 
are ! ” she says, and in half a minute more she begins to 
laugh, and says ‘‘ Did I really tear your cap to shreds ? ” 
and when I told her ‘‘ You certainly did so Caroline ” 
she laughed again and said while she patted my face 
Then why do you wear such queer old caps you dear 
old thing? If you hadn’t worn such queer old caps I 
don’t think I should have done it even then.” Fancy the 
girl ! Nothing could get out of her what she was going 
to do except 0 she would do well enough, and we parted 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


409 


she being very thankful and kissing my hands, and I 
nevermore saw or heard of that girl, except that I shall 
always believe that a very genteel cap which was brought 
anonymous to me one Saturday night in an oilskin basket 
by a most impertinent young sparrow of a monkey whis- 
tling with dirty shoes on the clean steps and playing the 
harp on the Airy railings with a hoop-stick came from 
Caroline. 

What you lay yourself open to my dear in the way of 
being the object of uncharitable suspicions when you go 
into the Lodging business I have not the w'ords to tell 
you, but never was I so dishonorable as to have two keys 
nor would I willingly think it even of Miss Wozenham 
lower down on the other side of the way sincerely hoping 
that it may not be, though doubtless at the same time 
money cannot come from nowhere and it is not reason to 
suppose that Bradshaws put it in for love be it blotty as 
it may. It is a hardship hurting to the feelings that 
Lodgers open their minds so wide to the idea that you 
are trying to get the better of them and shut their minds 
so close to the idea that they are trying to get the better 
of you, but as Major Jackman says to me “ I know the 
ways of this circular world Mrs. Lirriper, and that 's one 
of ^em all round it ” and many is the little ruffle in my 
mind that the Major has smoothed, for he is a clever man 
who has seen much. Dear dear, thirteen years have 
passed though it seems but yesterday since I was sitting 
with my glasses on at the open front parlor window one 
evening in August (the parlors being then vacant) read- 
ing yesterday^s paper my eyes for print being poor though 
still I am thankful to say a long sight at a distance, 
when I hear a gentleman come posting across the road 
and up the street in a dreadful rage talking to himself in 
a fury and d^ing and chng somebody. By George I 
saj s he out loud and clutching his walking-stick, I ^11 
go to Mrs. Lirriper^s. Which is Mrs. Lirriper^s ? 
Then looking round and seeing me he flourishes his hat 
right ofi’ his head as if I had been the queen and he says 
Excuse the intrusion Madam, but pray Madam can you 
tell me at what number in this street there resides a well- 
known and much-respected lady by the name of Lirriper ? 

A little flustered though I must say gratified I tcok off 


410 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


my glasses and courtesied and said “ Sir, Mrs. Lirriper 
is your humble servant.^’ As-tonishing I says he. 

A million pardons 1 Madam, may I ask you to have the 
kindness to direct one of your domestics to open the 
door to a gentleman in search of apartments, by the name 
of Jackman ? I had never heard the name but a politer 
gentleman I never hope to see, for says he Madam I 
am shocked at your opening the door yourself to no wor- 
thier a fellow than Jemmy Jackman. After you Madam. 
I never precede a lady.^^ Then he comes into the parlors 
and he sniffs and he says ** Hah I These are parlors I 
Not musty cupboards ” he says '' but parlors, and no 
smell of coal-sacks.’^ Now my dear it having been re- 
marked by some inimical to the whole neighborhood that 
it always smells of coal-sacks which might prove a draw- 
back to Lodgers if encouraged, I says to the Major gently 
though firmly that I think he is referring to Arundel or 
Surrey or Howard but not Norfolk. Madam ” says he 

I refer to Wozenham’s lower down over the way — 
Madam you can form no notion what Wozenham’s is — 
Madam it is a vast coal-sack and Miss Wozenham has 
the principles and manners of a female heaver — Madam 
from the manner in which I have heard her mention you 
I know she has no appreciation of a lady, and from the 
manner in which she has conducted herself towards me 
I know she has no appreciation of a gentleman — Madam 
my name is Jackman — should you require any other ref- 
erence than what I have already said, I name the Bank 
of England — perhaps you know it I ” Such was the 
beginning of the Major’s occupying the parlors and from 
that hour to this the same and a most obliging Lodger 
and punctual in all respects except one irregular which 
I need not particularly specify, but made up for by his 
being a protection and at all times ready to fill in the 
papers of the Assessed Taxes and Juries and that, and 
once collared a young man with the drawing-room clock 
under his cloak, and once on the parapets with his own 
hands and blankets put out the kitchen chimney and after- 
wards attending the summons made a most eloquent 
speech against the Parish before the magistrates and 
saved the engine, and ever quite the gentleman though 
passionate. And certainly Miss Wozenham ’s detaining 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


411 


the trunks and umbrella was not in a liberal spiiit though 
it may have been according to her rights in law or an act 
I would myself have stooped to, the Major being so much 
the gentleman that though he is far from tall he seems 
almost so when he has his shirt-frill out and his frock- 
coat on and his hat with the curly brims, and in what 
service he was I cannot truly tell you my dear whether 
Militia or Foreign, for I never heard him even name him- 
self as Major but always simple ''Jemmy Jackman^’ and 
once soon after he came when I felt it my duty to let 
him know that Miss Wozenham had put it about that he 
was no Major and I took the liberty of adding "which 
you are sir^’ his words were "Madam at any rate I am 
not a Minor, and suflScient for the day is the evil thereof^’ 
which cannot be denied to be the sacred truth, nor yet 
his military ways of having his boots with only the dirt 
brushed off taken to him in the front parlor every morn- 
ing on a clean plate and varnishing them himself with a 
little sponge and a saucer and a whistle in a whisper so 
sure as ever his breakfast is ended, and so neat his ways 
that it never soils his linen which is scrupulous though 
more in quality than quantity, neither that nor his mus- 
tachios which to the best of my belief are done at the 
same time and which are as black and shining as his 
boots, his head of hair being a lovely white. 

It was the third year nearly up of the Major^s being in 
the parlors that early one morning in the month of Feb- 
ruary when Parliament was coming on and you may 
therefore suppose a number of impostors were about 
ready to take hold of anything they could get, a gentle- 
man and lady from the country came in to view the Sec- 
ond, and I well remember that I had been looking out of 
window and had watched them and the heavy sleet driv- 
ing down the street together looking for bills. I did not 
quite take to the face of the gentleman though he was 
good-looking too but the lady was a very pretty young 
thing and delicate, and it seemed too rough for her to be 
out at all though she had only come from the Adelphi 
Hotel which would not have been much above a quarter 
of a mile if the weather had been less severe. Now it 
did so happen my dear that I had been forced to put five 
shillings weekly additional on the second in consequence 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


112 

of a loss from running away full-dressed as if going out 
to a dinner-party, which was very artful and had made 
me rather suspicious taking it along with Parliament, so 
when the' gentleman proposed three months certain and 
the money in advance and leave then reserved to renew 
on the same terms for six months more, I says I was not 
quite certain but that I might have engaged myself to 
another party but would step down stairs and look into 
it if they would take a seat. They took a seat and 1 
went down to the handle of the Major^s door that I had 
already began to consult finding it a great blessing, and 
I knew by his whistling in a whisper that he was varnish- 
ing his boots which was generally considered private, 
however he kindly calls out If it ^s you. Madam, come 
in,^^ and I went in and told him. 

‘‘Well, Madam, says the Major rubbing his nose — 
.as I did fear at the moment with the black sponge but it 
was only his knuckle, he being always neat and dexter- 
ous with his fingers — “ well. Madam, I suppose you 
would be glad of the money 

I was delicate of saying “ Yes ” too out, for a little 
extra color rose into the Major^s cheeks and there was 
irregularity which I will not particularly specify in a 
quarter which I will not name. 

“I am of opinion. Madam, says the Major “that 
when money is ready for you — when it is ready for you, 
Mrs. Lirriper — you ought to take it. What is there 
against it. Madam, in this case up stairs ? 

“ I really cannot say there is anything against it sir, 
still I thought I would consult you.’^ 

“ You said a newly married couple, I think. Madam? 
says the Major. 

I says “ Ye-es. Evidently. And indeed the young 
lady mentioned to me in a casual way that she had not 
been married many months. 

The Major rubbed his nose again and stirred the var- 
nish round and round in its little saucer with his piece of 
sponge and took to his whistling in a whisper for a few 
moments. Then he says “ You would call it a Good Let, 
Madam ? ” 

“ 0 certainly a Good Let sir.^^ 

“ Say they renew for the additional six months 


MRS. LIKRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


413 


Would it put you about very much Madam if — if the 
worst was to come to the worst ? said the Major. 

‘‘ Well I hardly know/^ I says to the Major. “ It 
depends upon circumstances. Would you object’ Sir for 
instance ? 

“ I ? says the Major. “ Object ? Jemmy Jackman ? 
Mrs. Lirriper close with the proposal. 

So I went up stairs and accepted, and they came in 
next day which was Saturday and the Major was so good 
as to draw up a Memorandum of an agreement in a beau- 
tiful round hand and expressions that sounded to me 
equally legal and military, and Mr. Edson signed it on the 
Monday morning and the Major called upon Mr. Edson 
on the Tuesday and Mr. Edson called upon the Major on 
the Wednesday and the Second and the parlors were as 
friendly as could be wished. 

The three months paid for had run out and we had got 
without any fresh overtures as to payment into May my 
dear, when there came an obligation upon Mr. Edson to 
go a business expedition right across the Isle of Man, 
which fell quite unexpected on that pretty little thing 
and is not a place that according to my views is particu- 
larly in the way to anywhere at any time but that may 
be a matter of opinion. So short a notice was it that he 
was to go next day, and dreadfully she cried poor pretty 
and I am sure I cried too when I saw her on the cold 
pavement in the sharp east wind — it being a very back- 
ward spring that year — taking a last leave of him with 
her pretty bright hair blowing this way and that and her 
arms clinging round his neck and him saying ‘‘ There 
there there ! Now let me go Peggy. And by that time 
it was plain that what the Major had been so accommo- 
dating as to say he would not object to happening in the 
house, would happen in it, and I told her as much when 
he was gone while I comforted her with my arm up the 
staircase, for I sa3'’s ‘"You will soon have others to keep 
up for my pretty and you must think of that.^^ 

His letter never came when it ought to have come and 
what she went through morning after morning when the 
postman brought none for her the very postman himself 
compassionated when she ran down to the door, and yet 
we cannot wonder at its being calculated to blunt the 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


tl4 

feelings to have all the trouble of other people^s letters 
and none of the pleasure and doing it oftener in the mud 
and mizzle than not and at a rate of wages more resem- 
bling Little Britain than Great. But at last one morning 
when she was too poorly to come running down stairs he 
says to me with a pleased look in his face that made me 
next to love the man in his uniform coat though he was 
dripping wet. I have taken you first in the street this 
morning Mrs. Lirriper, for here ^s the one for Mrs. Ed- 
son.^’ I went up to her bedroom with it fast as ever I 
could go, and she sat up in bed when she saw it and 
kissed it and tore it open and then a blank stare came 
upon her. “ It ^s very short ! she says lifting her large 
eyes to my face. “ 0 Mrs. Lirriper it ^s very short I I 
says “ My dear Mrs. Edson no doubt that ^s because your 
husband had n^t time to write more just at that time.^^ 
“ No doubt, no doubt,’’ says she, and puts her two hands 
on her face and turns round in her bed. 

I shut her softly in and I crept down stairs and I 
tapped at the Major’s door, and when the Major having 
his thin slices of bacon in his own Butch oven saw me he 
came out of his chair and put me down on the sofa. 
‘‘ Hush ! ” says he, I see something ’s the matter. 
Don’t speak — take time.” I says 0 Major I am afraid 
there ’s cruel work up stairs.” Yes yes ” says he “ I 
had begun to be afraid of it — take time.” And then in 
opposition to his own words he rages out frightfully, and 
says “I shall never forgive myself Madam, that I, Jem- 
my Jackman, didn’t see it all that morning — didn’t go 
straight up stairs when my boot-sponge was in my hand 
— did n’t force it down his throat — and choke him dead 
with it on the spot ! ” 

The Major and me agreed when we came to ourselves 
that just at present we could do no more than take on to 
suspect nothing and use our best endeavors to keep that 
poor young creature quiet, and what I ever should have 
done without the Major when it got about among the 
organ-men that quiet was our object is unknown, for he 
made lion and tiger war upon them to that degree that 
without seeing it I could not have believed it was in any 
gentleman to have such a power of bursting out with fire- 
irons walking-sticks water-jugs coals potatoes off his table 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


415 


the very hat off his head, and at the same time so furiou.s 
in foreign languages that they would stand with their 
handles half turned fixed like the Sleeping Ugly — for I 
cannot say Beauty. 

Ever to see the postman come near the house now gave 
me such a fear that it was a reprieve when he went by, 
but in about another ten days or a fortnight he says 
again Here ^s one for Mrs. Edson. — Is she pretty 
well ? She is pretty well postman, but not well 
enough to rise so early as she used which was so far 
gospel-truth. 

I carried the letter in to the Major at his breakfast and 
I says tottering “ Major I have not the courage to take it 
up to her.^^ 

It ^s an ill-looking villain of a letter,^^ says the Major. 

I have not the courage Major ” I says again in a 
tremble '' to take it up to her.^^ 

After seeming lost in consideration for some moments 
the Major says, raising his head as if something new and 
useful had occurred to his mind Mrs. Lirriper, I shall 
never forgive myself that I, Jemmy Jackman, did n^t go 
straight up stairs that morning when my boot-sponge was 
in my hand — and force it down his throat — and choke 
him dead with it.^^ 

Major I says a little hasty “ you did n^t do it which 
is a blessing, for it would have done no good and I think 
your sponge was better employed on your own honorable 
boots. 

So we got to be rational, and planned that I should 
tap at her bedroom door and lay the letter on the mat 
outside and wait on the upper landing for what might 
happen, and never was gunpowder cannon-balls or shells 
or rockets more dreaded than that dreadful letter was by 
me as I took it to the second floor. 

A terrible loud scream sounded through the house the 
minute after she had opened it, and I found her on the 
floor lying as if her life was gone. My dear I never 
looked at the face of the letter which was lying open by 
her, for there was no occasion. 

Everything I needed to bring her round the Major 
brought up with his own hands, besides running out to 
the chemist^s lor what was not in the house and likewise 


416 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


having the fiercest of all his many skirmishes with a mu- 
sical instrument representing a ball-room I do not know 
in what particular country and company waltzing in and 
out at folding-doors with rolling eyes. When after a 
long time I saw her coming to, I slipped on the landing 
till I heard her cry, and then I went in and says cheerily 

Mrs. Edson you ^re not well my dear and it ^s not to be 
wondered at,’^ as if I had not been in before. Whether 
she believed or disbelieved I cannot say and it would 
signify nothing if I could, but I stayed by her for hours 
and then she God ever blesses me I and says she will try 
to rest for her head is bad. 

Major,’^ I whispers, looking in at the parlors, “ I 
beg and pray of you don’t go out.” 

The Major whispers, Madam, trust me I will do no 
such a thing. How is she ? ” 

I says “ Major the good Lord above us only knows 
what burns and rages in her poor mind. I left her sit- 
ting at her window. I am going to sit at mine.” 

It came on afternoon and it came on evening. Norfolk 
is a delightful street to lodge in — provided you don’t go 
lower down — but of a summer evening when the dust 
and waste paper lie in it and stray children play in it and 
a kind of a gritty calm and bake settles on it and a peal 
of church-bells is practising in the neighborhood it is a 
trifle dull, and never have I seen it since at such a time 
and never shall I see it evermore at such a time without 
seeing the dull June evening when that forlorn young 
creature sat at her open corner window on the second 
and me at my open corner window (the other corner) on 
the third. Something merciful, something wiser and bet- 
ter far than my own self, had moved me while it was yet 
light to sit in my bonnet and shawl, and as the shadows 
fell and the tide rose I could sometimes — when I put 
out my head and looked at her window below — see that 
she leaned out a little looking down the street. It was 
just settling dark when I saw her in the street. 

So fearful of losing sight of her that it almost stops 
my breath while I tell it, I went down stairs faster than 
I ever moved in all my life and only tapped with my 
hand at the Major’s door in passing it and slipping out. 
She was gone already. I made the same speed down the 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


417 


street and when I came to the corner of Howard Street 1 
saw that she had turned it and was there plain before me 
going towards the west. 0 with what a thankful heart I 
saw her going along ! 

She was quite unacquainted with London and had very 
seldom been out for more than an airing in our own 
street where she knew two or three little children belong- 
ing to neighbors and had sometimes stood among them 
at the end of the street looking at the water. She must 
be going at hazard I knew, still she kept the by-streets 
quite correctly as long as they would serve her, and then 
turned up into the Strand. But at every corner I could 
see her head turned one way, and that way was always 
the river way. 

It may have been only the darkness and quiet of the 
Adelphi that caused her to strike into it but she struck 
into it much as readily as if she had set out to go there, 
which perhaps was the case. She went straight down to 
the Terrace and along it and looked over the iron rail, 
and I often woke afterwards in my own bed with the hor- 
ror of seeing her doing it. The desertion of the wharf 
below and the flowing of the high water there seemed to 
settle her purpose. She looked about as if to make out 
the way down, and she struck out the right way or the 
wrong way — I don^t know which, for I don’t know the 
place before or since — and I followed her the way she 
went. 

It was noticeable that all this time she never once 
looked back. But there was now a great change in the 
manner of her going, and instead of going at a steady 
quick walk with her arms folded before her, — among the 
dark dismal arches she went in a wild way with her arms 
opened wide, as if they were wings and she was flying to 
her death. 

We were on the wharf and she stopped. I stopped. 
I saw her hands at her bonnet-strings, and I rushed be- 
tween her and the brink and took her round the waist 
with both my arms. She might have drowned me, I felt 
then, but she could never have got quit of me. 

Down to that moment my mind had been all in a maze 
and not half an idea had I had in it what I should say to 
her, but the instant I touched her it came to me like 


418 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


magic and I had my natural voice and my senses and 
even almost my breath. 

“ Mrs. Edson I says My dear ! Take care, llow 
ever did you lose your way and stumble on a dangerous 
place like this ? Why you must have come here by the 
most perplexing streets in all London. No wonder you 
are lost, I am sure. And this place too I Why I thought 
nobody ever got here, except me to order my coals and 
the Major in the parlors to smoke his cigar I — for I 
saw that blessed man close by, pretending to it. 

Hah — Hah — Hum I ’’ coughs the Major. 

“ And good gracious me I says, why here he is I 

‘‘ Halloa I who goes there I says the Major in a mili- 
tary manner. 

Well I I says, if this don^t beat everything I 
Don’t you know us Major Jackman ? ” 

Halloa ! ” says the Major. ‘‘ Who calls on Jemmy 
Jackman ? ” (and more out of breath he was, and did it 
less like life, than I should have expected.) 

Why here’s Mrs. Edson Major” I says, '^strolling 
out to cool her poor head which has been very bad, has 
missed her way and got lost, and Goodness knows where 
she might have got to but for me coming here to drop an 
order into my coal merchant’s letter-box and you coming 
here to smoke your cigar 1 — And you really are not well 
enough my dear” I says to her ‘‘to be half so far from 
home without me. — And your arm will be very accept- 
able I am sure Major” I says to him “and I know she 
may lean upon it as heavy as she likes.” And now we 
had both got her — thanks be Above I — one on each 
side. 

She was all in a cold shiver and she so continued till I 
laid her on her own bed, and up to the early morning she 
held me by the hand and moaned and moaned “ 0 wicked, 
wicked, wicked I ” But when at last I made believe to 
droop my head and be overpowered with a dead sleep, I 
heard that poor young creature give such touching and 
such humble thanks for being preserved from taking her 
own life in her madness that I thought I should have cried 
my eyes out on the counterpane and I knew she was safe. 

Being well enough to do and able to afford it, me and 
the Major laid our little plans next day while she was 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


419 


asleep worn out, and so I says to her as soon as I could 
do it nicely : — 

“ Mrs. Edson my dear, when Mr. Edson paid me the 
rent for these further six months — ” 

She gave a start and I felt her large eyes look at me, 
but I went on with it and with my needle-work. 

“ — I canH say that I am quite sure I dated the re- 
ceipt right. Could you let me look at it ? 

She laid her frozen cold hand upon mine and she 
looked through me when I was forced to look up from 
my needle-work, but I had taken the precaution of having 
on my spectacles. 

“ I have no receipt says she. 

Ah I Then he has got it I says in a careless way. 
** It ^s of no great consequence. A receipt ^s a receipt.^^ 

From that time she always had hold of my hand when 
I could spare it which was generally only when I read 
to her, for of course she and me had our bits of needle- 
work to piud at and neither of us was very handy at those 
little things, though I am still rather proud of my share 
in them too considering. And though she took to all I 
read to her, I used to fancy that next to what was taught 
upon the Mount she took most of all to His gentle com- 
passion for us poor women and to His young life and to 
how His mother was proud of him and treasured His say- 
ings in her heart. She had a grateful look in her eyes 
that never never never will be out of mine until they are 
closed in my last sleep, and when I chanced to look at 
her without thinking of it I would always meet that look, 
and she would often offer me her trembling lip to kiss, 
much more like a little affectionate half broken-hearted 
child than ever I can imagine any grown person. 

One time the trembling of this poor lip was so strong 
and her tears ran down so fast that I thought she was 
going to tell me all her woe, so I takes her two hands in 
mine and I says : — 

No my dear not now, you had best not try to do it 
now. Wait for better times when you have got over this 
and are strong, and then you shall tell me whatever you 
will. Shall it be agreed ? 

With our hands still joined she nodded her head many 
times, and she lifted my hands and put them to her lips 
and to her bosom. 


420 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


** Only one word now my dear I says. ** Is there 
any one ? 

She looked inquiringly Any one ? 

That I can go to ? 

She shook her head. 

“ No one that I can bring ? 

She shook her head. 

No one is wanted by me my dear. Now that may be 
considered past and gone.’^ 

Not much more than a week afterwards — for this was 
far on in the time of our being so together — I was bend- 
ing over at her bedside with my ear down to her lips, 
by turns listening for her breath and looking for a sign 
of life in her face. At last it came in a solemn way — • 
not in a flash but like a kind of pale faint light brought 
very slow to the face. 

She said something to me that had no sound in it, but 
1 saw she asked me : — 

Is this death ? 

And I says ‘‘ Poor dear poor dear, I think it is.’^ 

Knowing somehow that she wanted me to move her 
weak right hand, I took it and laid it on her breast and 
then folded her other hand upon it, and she prayed a 
good good prayer and I joined in it poor me though there 
were no words spoke. Then I brought the baby in its 
wrappers from where it lay, and I says : — 

My dear this is sent to a childless old woman. This 
is for me to take care of.’^ 

The trembling lip was put up towards my face for the 
last time, and I dearly kissed it. 

Yes my dear I says. Please God I Me and the 
Major. 

I don^t know how to tell it light, but I saw her soul 
brighten and leap up, and get free and fly away in the 
grateful look. 

^ ^ 

So this is the why and wherefore of its coming to 
pass my dear that we called him Jemmy, being after the 
Major his own godfather with Lirriper for a surname 
being after myself, and never was a dear child such a 
brightening thing in a Lodgings or such a playmate to 
his grandmother as Jemmy to this house and me, and 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


421 


always good and minding what he was told (upon the 
whole) and soothing for the temper and making every- 
thing pleasanter except when he grew old enough to drop 
his cap down Wozenham’s Airy and they would n^t hand 
it up to him, and being worked into a state I put on my 
best bonnet and gloves and parasol with the child in my 
hand and I says ‘‘Miss Wozenham I little thought ever 
to have entered your house but unless my grandson’s cap 
is instantly restored, the laws of this country regulating 
the property of the Subject shall at length decide betwixt 
yourself and me, cost what it may."'' With a sneer upon 
her face which did strike me I must way as being expres- 
sive of two keys but it may have been a mistake and if 
there is any doubt let Miss Wozenham have the full ben- 
efit of it as is but right, she rang the bell and she says 
“ Jane, is there a street-child’s old cap down our Airy ? ” 
I says “ Miss Wozenham before your housemaid answers 
that question you must allow me to inform you to your face 
that my grandson is not a street-child and is not in the 
habit of wearing old caps. In fact ” I says “ Miss Wo- 
zenham I am far from sure that my grandson’s cap may 
not be newer than your own ” which was perfectly sav- 
age in me, her lace being the commonest machine-make 
washed and torn besides, but I had been put into a state 
to begin with fomented by impertinence. Miss Wozen- 
ham says red in the face “Jane you heard my question, 
is there any child’s cap down our Airy ? ” “ Yes Ma’am ” 

says Jane “ I think I did see some such rubbish a lying 
there.” “Then” says Miss Wozenham “let these vis- 
itors out, and then throw up that worthless article out of 
my premises.” But here the child who had been staring 
at Miss Wozenham with all his eyes and more, frowns 
down his little eyebrows purses up his little mouth puts 
his chubby legs far apart turns his little dimpled fists 
round and round slowly over one another like a little 
coffee-mill, and says to her “ Oo impdent to mi Gran, me 
tut oor hi I ” “ Oh ! ” says Miss Wozenham looking 

scornfully at the Mite “ this is not a street-child is it not ! 
Really I ” I bursts out laughing and I says “ Miss Wo- 
zenham if this ain’t a pretty sight to you I don’t envy 
your feelings and I wish you good day. Jemmy come 
along with Gran.” And I was still in the best of humors 


422 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


though his cap came flying up into the street as if it had 
been just turned on out of the water-plug, and I went 
home laughing all the way, all owing to that dear boy. 

The miles and miles that me and the Major have trav- 
elled with Jemmy in the dusk between the lights are not 
to be calculated. Jemmy driving on the coach-box which 
is the Major^s brass-bound writing-desk on the table, me 
inside in the easy-chair and the Major Guard up behind 
with a brown paper horn doing it really wonderful. I do 
assure you my dear that sometimes when I have taken a 
few winks in my place inside the coach and have come 
half awake by the flashing light of the fire and have heard 
that precious pet driving and the Major blowing up be- 
hind to have the change of horses ready when we got to 
the Inn, I have half believed we were on the old North 
Road that my poor Lirriper knew so well. Then to see 
that child and the Major both wrapped up getting down 
to warm their feet and going stamping about and having 
glasses of ale out of the paper match-boxes on the chim- 
ney-piece is to see the Major enjoying it fully as much as 
the child I am very sure, and it ^s equal to any play when 
Coachee opens the coach door to look in at me inside and 
say Wery ^past that ^tage. — ^Frightened old lady ? ’’ 

But what my inexpressible feelings were when we lost 
that child can only be compared to the Major’s which 
were not a shade better, through his straying out at five 
years old and eleven o’clock in the forenoon and never 
heard of by word or sign or deed till half past nine at 
night, when the Major had gone to the Editor of the 
Times newspaper to put in an advertisement, which came 
out next day four-and-twenty hours after he was found, 
and which I mean always carefully to keep in my laven- 
der drawer as the first printed account of him. The more 
the day got on, the more I got distracted and the Major 
too and both of us made worse by the composed ways of 
the police though very civil and obliging and what I must 
call their obstinacy in not entertaining the idea that' he 
was stolen. We mostly find Mum ” says the sergeant 
who came round to comfort me, which he did n’t at all 
and he had been one of the private constables in Caro- 
line’s time to which he referred in his opening words 
when he said ‘'Don’t give way to uneasiness in your 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


423 


mind Mum, it ^11 all come as right as my nose did when I 
got the same barked by that young woman in your sec- 
ond floor — says this sergeant “we mostly find Mum as 
people ain^t over-anxious to have what I may call second- 
hand children. You’W get him back Mum.’^ “0 but 
my dear good sir I says clasping my hands and wring- 
ing them and clasping them again “he is such an uncom- 
mon child I “Yes Mum says the sergeant, “ we 
mostly find that too Mum. The question is what his 
clothes were worth. “ His clothes I says “ were not 
worth much sir for he had only got his playing-dress on, 
but the dear child ! — “ All right Mum ’’ says the ser- 

geant. “ You ’ll get him back Mum. And even if he ’d 
had his best clothes on, it would n’t come to worse than 
his being found wrapped up in a cabbage-leaf, a shivering 
in a lane.” His words pierced my heart like daggers 
and daggers, and me and the Major ran in and out like 
wild things all day long till the Major returning from his 
interview with the Editor of the Times at night rushes 
into my little room hysterical and squeezes my hand 
and wipes his eyes and says “ Joy joy — officer in plain 
clothes came up on the steps as I was letting myself in 
— compose your feelings — Jemmy’s found.” Conse- 
quently I fainted away and when 1 came to, embraced 
the legs of the officer in plain clothes who seemed to be 
taking a kind of a quiet inventory in his mind of the 
property in my little room with brown whiskers, and I 
says “ Blessings on you sir where is the Barling ! ” and 
he says “ In Kennington Station House.” I was drop- 
ping at his feet Stone at the image of that Innocence in 
cells with murderers when he adds “ He followed the 
Monkey.” I says deeming it slang language “ 0 sir ex- 
plain for a loving grandmother what Monkey ! ” He 
says “ him in the spangled cap with the strap under the 
chin, as won’t keep on — him as sweeps the crossings on 
a round table and don’t want to draw his sabre more than 
he can help.” Then I understood it all and most thank- 
fully thanked him, and me and the Major and him drove 
over to Kennington and there we found our boy lying 
quite comfortable before a blazing fire having sweetly 
played himself to sleep upon a small accordion nothing 
like so big as a flat-iron which they had been so kind as 


424 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


to lend him for the purpose and which it appeared had 
been stopped upon a very youn^ person. 

My dear the system upon which the Major commenced 
and as I may say perfected Jemmy^s learning when he 
was so small that if the dear was on the other side of 
the table you had to look under it instead of over it to 
see him with his mother’s own bright hair in beautiful 
curls, is a thing that ought to be known to the Throne 
and Lords and Commons and then might obtain some 
promotion for the Major which he well deserves and 
would be none the worse for (speaking between friends) 
L. S. D.-ically. When the Major first undertook his 
learning he says to me : — 

“I’m going Madam” he says “to make our child a 
Calculating Boy.” 

“ Major” I says, “ you terrify me and may do the pet 
a permanent injury you would never forgive yourself.” 

“ Madam,” says the Major, “ next to my regret that 
when I had my boot-sponge in my hand, I did n’t choke 
that scoundrel with it — on the spot — ” 

“ There ! For Gracious’ sake,” I interrupts, “ let his 
conscience find him without sponges.” 

“ — I say next to that regret, Madam,” says the Ma- 
jor “would be the regret with which my breast,” which 
he tapped, “would be surcharged if this fine mind was 
not early cultivated. But mark me Madam,” says the 
Major holding up his forefinger “ cultivated on a princi- 
ple that will make it a delight.” 

. “ Major ” I says “ I will be candid with you and tell 
you openly that if ever I find the dear child fall off in 
his appetite I shall know it is his calculations and shall 
put a stop to them at two minutes’ notice. Or if I find 
them mounting to his head ” I says, “ or striking any- 
ways cold to his stomach or leading to anything ap- 
proaching flabbiness in his legs, the result will be the 
same, but Major you are a clever man and have seen 
much and you love the child and are his own godfather, 
and if you feel a confidence in trying try.” 

“ Spoken Madam ” says the Major “ like Emma Lir- 
riper. All I have to ask Madam, is, that you will leave 
my godson and myself to make a week or two’s prepara- 
tions for surprising you, and that you will give me leave 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


425 


to have up and down any small articles not actually in 
use that I may require from the kitchen.^’ 

'' From the kitchen Major ? I says half feeling as if 
he had a mind to cook the child. 

“ From the kitchen says the Major, and smiles and 
swells, and at the same time looks taller. 

So I passed my word and the Major and the dear boy 
were shut up together for half an hour at a time through 
a certain while, and never could I hear anything going 
on betwixt them but talking and laughing and Jemmy 
clapping his hands and screaming out numbers, so I says 
to myself “ it has not harmed him yet ” nor could I on 
examining the dear find any signs of it anywhere about 
him which was likewise a great relief. At last one day 
Jemmy brings me a card in joke in the Major’s neat writ- 
ing “ The Mess’^^' Jemmy Jackman ” for we had given 
him the Major’s other name too request the honor of 
Mrs. Lirriper’s company at the Jackman Institution in 
the front parlor this evening at five, military time, to wit- 
ness a few slight feats of elementary arithmetic.” And 
if you ’ll believe me there in the front parlor at five punc- 
tual to the moment was the Major behind the Pembroke 
table with both leaves up and a lot of things from the 
kitchen tidily set out on old newspapers spread atop of 
it, and there was the Mite stood up on a chair with his 
rosy cheeks flushing and his eyes sparkling clusters of 
diamonds. 

‘'Now Gran” says he, “oo tit down and don’t oo 
touch ler people” — for he saw with every one of those 
diamonds of his that I was going to give him a squeeze. 

“ Very well sir ” I says “ I am obedient in this good 
company I am sure.” And I sits down in the easy-chair 
that was put for me, shaking my sides. 

But picture my admiration when the Major going on 
almost as quick as if he was conjuring sets out all the 
articles he names, and says, “Three saucepans, an Italian 
iron, a hand-bell, a toasting-fork, a nutmeg-grater, four 
potlids, a spice-box, two egg-cups, and a chopping-board 
— how many ? ” and when that Mite instantly cries “ Tif- 
teen, tut down tive and carry ler ’toppin-board” and then 
claps his hands draws up his legs and dances on his chair I 

My dear with the same astonishing ease and coirectness 


426 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


him and the Major added up the tables chairs and sofy^ 
the picters fender and fire-irons their own selves me and 
the cat and the eyes in Miss Wozenham’s head, and when- 
ever the sum was done Young Roses and Diamonds claps 
his hands and draws up his legs and dances on his chair. 

The pride of the Major ! Here ^s a mind Ma’am I ’’ 
be says to me behind his hand.) 

Then he says aloud, We now come to the next ele- 
mentary rule, — which is called — ” 

“ Umtraction I ” cries Jemmy. 

Right,” says the Major. ‘‘ We have here a toasting- 
fork, a potato in its natural state, two potlids, one egg. 
cup, a wooden spoon, and two skewers, from which it is 
necessary for commercial purposes to subtract a sprat- 
gridiron, a small pickle-jar, two lemons, one pepper-cas- 
tor, a blackbeetl e-trap, and a knob of the dresser-drawer 
— what remains ? ” 

Toatin-fork I ” cries Jemmy. 

In numbers how many ? ” says the Major. 

“ One ! ” cries Jemmy. 

(“here’s a boy. Ma’am?” says the Major to me, 
behind his hand.) 

Then the Major goes on : — 

“ We now approach the next elementary rule, — which 
is entitled — ” 

Tickleication ” cries Jemmy. 

** Correct ” says the Major. 

But my dear to relate to you in detail the way in which 
they multiplied fourteen sticks of firewood by two bits of 
ginger and a larding-needle, or divided pretty well every- 
thing else there was on the table by the heater of the 
Italian iron and a chamber candlestick, and got a lemon 
over, would make my head spin round and round and 
round as it did at the time. So I says “ if you ’ll excuse 
my addressing the chair Professor Jackman I think the 
period of the lecture has now arrived when it becomes 
necessary that I should take a good hug of this young 
scholar.” Upon which Jemmy calls out from his station 
on the chair, Gran oo open oor arms and me ’ll make a 
’pring into ’em.” So I opened my arms to him as I had 
opened my sorrowful heart when his poor young mother 
lay a dying, and he had his jump and we had a good long 


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MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


427 


hug together and the Major prouder than any peacock 
says to me behind his hand, ‘‘You need not let him know 
it Madam (which I certainly need not for the Major was 
quite audible) “ but he is a boy 1 

In this way Jemmy grew and grew and went to day- 
school and continued under the Major too, and in sum- 
mer we were as happy as the days were long, and in 
winter we were as happy as the days were short and 
there seemed to rest a Blessing on the Lodgings for they 
as good as Let themselves and would have done it if 
there had been twice the accommodation, when sore and 
hard against my will I one day says to the Major. 

“ Major you know what I am going to break to you. 
Our boy must go to boarding-school.^^ 

It was a sad sight to see the Major’s countenance drop, 
and I pitied the good soul with all my heart. 

“Yes Major” I says “though he is as popular with 
the Lodgers as you are yourself and though he is to you 
and me what only you and me know, still it is in the 
course of things and Life is made of partings and we 
must part with our Pet.” 

Bold as I spoke, I saw two Majors and half a dozen 
fireplaces, and when the poor Major put one of his neat 
bright-varnished boots upon the fender and his elbow on 
his knee and his head upon his hand and rocked himself 
a little to and fro, I was dreadfully cut up. 

“But” says I clearing my throat “you have so well 
prepared him Major — he has had such a Tutor in you — 
that he will have none of the first drudgery to go through. 
And he is so clever besides that he ’ll soon make his way 
to the front rank.” 

“He is a boy” says the Major — having sniffed — 
“ that has not his like on the face of the earth.” 

“ True as you say Major, and it is not for us merely 
for our own sakes to do anything to keep him back from 
being a credit and an ornament wherever he goes and 
perhaps even rising to be a great man, is it Major ? He 
will have all my little savings when my work is done 
(being all the world to me) and we must try to make him 
a wise man and a good man, must n’t we Major ? ” 

“ Madam ” says the Major rising “ Jemmy Jackman is 
becoming an older file than I was aware of, and you put 


428 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINCiS. 


him to shame. You are thoroughly right Madam. You 
are simply and undeniably right. — And if you ^11 excuse 
me, I ^11 take a walk.’’ 

So the Major being gone out and Jemmy being at 
home, I got the child into my little room here and I stood 
him by my chair and I took his mother’s own curls in my 
hand and I spoke to him loving and serious. And when 
I had reminded the darling how that he was now in his 
tenth year and when I had said to him about his getting 
on in life pretty much what I had said to the Major I 
broke to him how that we must have this same parting, 
and there I was forced to stop for there I saw of a sud- 
den the well-remembered lip with its tremble, and it so 
brought back that time I But with the spirit that was in 
him he controlled it soon and he says gravely nodding 
through his tears, “ I understand Gran — I knew it must 
be. Gran — go on Gran, don’t be afraid of we.” And 
when I had said all that ever I could think of, he turned 
his bright steady face to mine and he says just a little 
broken here and there ‘‘You shall see Gran that I can be 
a man and that I can do anything that is grateful and 
loving to you — and if I don’t grow up to be what you 
would like to have me — I hope it will be — because I 
shall die.” And with that he sat down by me and I 
went on to tell him of the school of which I had excellent 
recommendations and where it was and how many 
scholars and what games they played as I had heard and 
what length of holidays, to all of which he listened bright 
and clear. And so it came that at last he says “ And 
now dear Gran let me kneel down here where I have been 
used to say my prayers and let me fold my face for just 
a minute in your gown and let me cry, for you have 
been more than father — more than mother — more than 
brothers sisters friends — to me ! ” And so he did cry 
and I too and we were both much the better for it. 

From that time forth he was true to his word and ever 
blithe and ready, and even when me and the Major took 
him down into Lincolnshire he was far the gayest of the 
party though for sure and certain he might easily have 
been that, but he really was and put life into us only 
when it came to the last Good-by, he says with a wistful 
look, “ You would n’t have me not really sorry would 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


429 


you Gran ? and when I says No dear, Lord forbid I 
he says I am glad of that 1 and ran in out of sight. 

But now that the child was gone out of the Lodgings 
the Major fell into a regularly moping state. It was taken 
notice of by all the Lodgers that the Major moped. He 
had n^t even the same air of being rather tall that he 
used to have, and if he varnished his boots with a single 
gleam of interest it was as much as he did. 

One evening the Major came into my little room to 
take a cup of tea and a morsel of buttered toast and to 
read Jemmy ^s newest letter which had arrived that after* 
noon (by the very same postman more than middle-aged 
upon the Beat now), and the letter raising him up a little 
T says to the Major : — 

Major you must n’t get into a moping way.” 

The Major shook his head. Jemmy Jackman Mad- 
am,” he says with a deep sigh, “ is an older file than I 
thought him.” 

Moping is not the way to grow younger Major.” 

“ My dear Madam,” says the Major, “ is there any 
way of growing younger ? ” 

Feeling that the Major was getting rather the best of 
that point I made a diversion to another. 

“ Thirteen years ! Thir-teen years ! Many Lodgers 
have come and gone, in the thirteen years that you have 
lived in the parlors Major.” 

‘‘ Hah I ” says the Major warming. “ Many Madam, 
many.” 

“ And I should say you have been familiar with them 
all ? ” 

As a rule (with its exceptions like all rules) my dear 
Madam” says the Major, ‘‘they have honored me with 
their acquaintance, and not unfrequently with their con- 
fidence.” 

Watching the Major as he drooped his white head and 
stroked his black mustachios and moped again, a thought 
which I think must have been going about looking for an 
owner somewhere dropped into my old noddle if you 
will excuse the expression. 

“ The walls of my Lodgings ” I says in a casual way 
— for my dear it is of no use going straight at a man 
who mopes — “ might have something to tell, if they 
could tell it.” 


430 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


The Major neither moved nor said anything but I saw 
he was attending with his shoulders my dear — attending 
with his shoulders to what I said. In fact I saw that his 
shoulders were struck by it. 

“ The dear boy was always fond of story-books I 
went on, like as if I was talking to myself. I am sure 
this house — his own home — might write a story or 
two for his reading one day or another.^' 

The Major^s shoulders gave a dip and a curve and his 
head came up in his shirt-collar. The Major^s head came 
up in his shirt-collar as I had n^t seen it come up since 
Jemmy went to school. 

It is unquestionable that in intervals of cribbage and 
a friendly rubber, my dear Madam, says the Major, 
“ and also over what used to be called in my young 
times — in the salad days of Jemmy Jackman — the so- 
cial glass, I have exchanged many a reminiscence with 
your Lodgers. 

My remark was — I confess I made it with the deepest 
and artfullest of intentions — '‘I wish our dear boy had 
heard them 1 

“ Are you serious Madam ? ” asks the Major starting 
and turning full round. 

Why not Major ? 

** Madam says the Major, turning up one of his cuffs, 
** they shall be written for him.^' 

“ Ah ! Now you speak I says giving my hands a 
pleased clap. Now you are in a way out of moping 
Major 1 

Between this and my holidays — I mean the dear 
boy^s says the Major turning up his other cuff, a good 
deal may be done towards it.’^ 

Major you are a clever man and you have seen much 
and not a doubt of it.^^ 

I ^11 begin, says the Major looking as tall as ever he 
did, to-morrow. 

My dear the Major was another man in three days and 
he was himself again in a week and he wrote and wrote 
and wrote with his pen scratching like rats behind the 
wainscot, and whether he had many grounds to go upon 
or whether he did at all romance I cannot tell you, but 
what he has written is in the left-hand glass closet of the 
little bookcase close behind you. 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


431 


CHAPTER II. 

HOW THE PARLORS ADDED A FEW WORDS. 

I HAVE the honor of presenting myself by the name 
of Jackman. I esteem it a proud privilege to go down 
to posterity through the instrumentality of the most re- 
markable boy that ever lived, — by the name of Jemmy 
Jackman Lirriper, — and of my most worthy and most 
highly respected friend, Mrs Emma Lirriper, of Eighty- 
one, Norfolk Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex, 
in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 

It is not for me to express the rapture with which we 
received that dear and eminently remarkable boy, on 
the occurrence of his first Christmas holidays. Sufiice 
it to observe that when he came flying into the house 
with two splendid prizes (Arithmetic, and Exemplary 
Conduct), Mrs. Lirriper and myself embraced with 
emotion, and instantly took him to the Play, where we 
were all three admirably entertained. 

Nor is it to render homage to the virtues of the best 
of her good and honored sex — whom, in deference to 
her unassuming worth, I will only here designate by the 
initials E. L. — that I add this record to the bundle of 
papers with which our, in a most distinguished degree, 
remarkable boy has expressed himself delighted, before 
re-consigning the same to the left-hand glass closet of 
Mrs. Lirriper’s little bookcase. 

Neither is it to obtrude the name of the old original 
superannuated obscure Jemmy Jackman, once (to his 
degradation) of Wozenham’s, long (to his elevation) of 
Lirriper’s. If I could be consciously guilty of that piece 
of bad taste, it would indeed be a work of supererogation, 
now that the name is borne by Jemmy Jackman Lir- 
riper. 

No. I take up my humble pen to register a little 
record of our strikingly remarkable boy, which my poor 


432 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


capacity regards as presenting a pleasant little picture of 
the dear boy^s mind. The picture may be interesting to 
himself when he is a man. 

Our first reunited Christmas day was the most delight- 
ful one we have ever passed together. Jemmy was 
never silent for five minutes, except in church-time. He 
talked as we sat by the fire, he talked when we were out 
walking, he talked as we sat by the fire again, he talked 
incessantly at dinner, though he made a dinner almost as 
remarkable as himself. It was the spring of happiness in 
his fresh young heart fiowing and flowing, and it fertilized 
(if I may be allowed so bold a figure) my much-esteemed 
friend, and J J the present writer. 

There were only we three. We dined in my esteemed 
friend’s little room, and our entertainment was perfect. 
But everything in the establishment is, in neatness, or- 
der, and comfort, always perfect. After dinner our boy 
slipped away to his old stool at my esteemed friend’s 
knee, and there, with his hot chestnuts and his glass of 
brown sherry (really, a most excellent wine I) on a chair 
for a table, his face outshone the apples in the dish. 

We talked of these jottings of mine, which Jemmy had 
read through and through by that time ; and so it came 
about that my esteemed friend remarked, as she sat 
smoothing Jemmy’s curls : — 

And as you belong to the house too. Jemmy, — and 
so much more than the Lodgers, having been born in it, 
— why, your story ought to be added to the rest, I think, 
one of these days.” 

Jemmy’s eyes sparkled at this, and he said, “ So 1 
think. Gran.” 

Then he sat looking at the fire, and then he began to 
laugh in a sort of confidence with the fire, and then he 
said, folding his arms across my esteemed friend’s lap, 
and raising his bright face to hers : — 

“ Would you like to hear a boy’s story. Gran ? ” 

Of all things,” replied my esteemed friend. 

Would you, godfather ? ” 

‘ Of all things,” I too replied. 

“ Well, then,” said Jemmy, I ’ll tell you one.” 

Here our indisputably remarkable boy gave himself a 
hug, and laughed again, musically, at the idea of his 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


433 


coming out in that new line. Then he once more took 
the fire into the same sort of confidence as before, and 
began : — 

“ Once upon a time, When pigs drank wine, And mon- 
keys chewed tobacker, was neither in your time nor 
mine, But that ^s no macker — ” 

Bless the child I cried my esteemed friend, what^s 
amiss with his brain ! 

“ It ^s poetry, Gran,^^ returned Jemmy, shouting with 
laughter. “We always begin stories that way at 
school. 

“ Gave me quite a turn, Major,^^ said my esteemed 
fiiend, fanning herself with a plate. “ Thought he was 
light-headed ! 

“ In those remarkable times. Gran and godfather, there 
was once a boy, — not me, you know.^^ 

“ No, no,^^ says my respected friend, “ not you. Not 
him. Major, you understand ? ” 

“ No, no,^^ says I. 

“ And he went to school in Rutlandshire — 

“ Why not Lincolnshire ? says my respected friend. 

“ Why not, you dear old Gran ? Because I go to 
school in Lincolnshire, don^t 1? 

“ Ah, to be sure I says my respected friend. “ And 
it ^s not Jemmy, you understand. Major ? ” 

“ No, no,^^ says I. 

“ Well I our boy proceeded, hugging himself com- 
fortably, and laughing merrily (again in confidence with 
the fire), before he again looked up in Mrs. Lirriper’s 
face, “ and so he was tremendously in love with his 
schoolmaster's daughter, and she was the most beautiful 
creature that ever was seen, and she had brown eyes, 
and she had brown hair all curling beautifully, and she 
had a delicious voice, and she was delicious altogether, 
and her name was Seraphina.^^ 

“ What ^s the name of your schoolmaster's daughter. 
Jemmy ? ” asks my respected friend. 

“ Polly I replied Jemmy, pointing his forefinger at 
her. “ There now I Caught you ! Ha, ha, ha I 

When he and my respected friend had had a laugh and 
a hug together, our admittedly remarkable boy resumed 
with a great relish : — 


434 


MRS. LIBRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


** Well ! And so he loved her. And so he thought 
about her, and dreamed about her, and made her presents 
of oranges and nuts, and would have made her presents 
of pearls and diamonds if he could have afforded it gut of 
his pocket-money, but he could n’t. And so her father — 
0, he WAS a Tartar I Keeping the boys up to the mark, 
holding examinations once a month, lecturing upon ah 
sorts of subjects at all sorts of times, and knowing every 
thing in the world out of book. And so this boy — ” 

Had he any name ? ” asks my respected friend. 

“ No, he had n’t, Gran. Ha, ha I There now I Caught 
you again ! ” 

After this, they had another laugh and another hug, 
and then our boy went on. 

Well I And so this boy, he had a friend about as 
old as himself at the same school, and his name (for He 
had a name, as it happened) was — let me remember — 
was Bobbo.” 

“ Not Bob,” says my respected friend. 

Of course not,” says Jemmy. What made you 
think it was. Gran ? Well 1 And so this friend was the 
cleverest and bravest and best-looking and most gener- 
ous of all the friends that ever were, and so he was in 
love with Seraphina’s sister, and so Seraphina’s sister 
was in love with him, and so they all grew up.” 

Bless us I ” says my respected friend. “ They were 
very sudden about it.” 

So they all grew up,” our boy repeated, laughing 
heartily, ‘‘ and Bobbo and this boy went away together 
on horseback to seek their fortunes, and they partly got 
their horses by favor, and partly in a bargain ; that is to 
say, they had saved up between them seven and four- 
pence, and the two horses, being Arabs, were worih 
more, only the man said he would take that, to favor 
them. Well I And so they made their fortunes and 
came prancing back to the school, with their pockets full 
of gold enough to last forever. And so they rang at the 
parents’ and visitors’ bell (not the back gate), and when 
the bell was answered they proclaimed, the same as if 
it was scarlet fever, ‘ Every boy goes home for an indefi- 
nite period I ’ And then there was great hurrahing, and 
then they kissed Seraphina and her sister, — each his 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


435 


own love and not the other^s on any account, — and then 
they ordered the Tartar into instant confinement.^^ 

Poor man I said my respected friend. 

Into instant confinement, Gran,*^ repeated Jemmy, 
trying to look severe and roaring with laughter ; ‘‘ and 
he was to have nothing to eat but the boys’ dinners, and 
was to drink half a.cask of their beer every day. And 
so then the preparations were made for the two weddings, 
and there were hampers, and potted things, and sweet 
things, and nuts, and postage-stamps, and all manner of 
things. And so they were so jolly, that they let the Tar- 
tar out, and he was jolly too.” 

I am glad they let him out,” says my respected 
friend, because he had only done his duty.” 

“ 0, but had n’t he overdone it, though 1 ” cried Jem- 
my. “ Well I And so then this boy mounted his horse, 
with his bride in his arms, and cantered away, and can- 
tered on and on till he came to a certain place where he 
had a certain Gran and a certain godfather, — not you 
two, you know.” 

No, no,” we both said. 

And there he was received with great rejoicings, and 
he filled the cupboard and the bookcase with gold, and 
he showered it out on his Gran and his godfather because 
they were the two kindest and dearest people that ever 
lived in this world. And so while they were sitting up 
to their knees in gold, a knocking was heard at the street 
door, and who should it be but Bobbo, also on horseback 
with his bride in his arms, and what had he come to say 
but that he would take (at double rent) all the Lodgings, 
forever, that were not wanted by this boy and this Gran 
and this godfather, and that they would all live together, 
and all be happy I And so they were, and so it never 
ended I ” 

And was there no quarrelling ? ” asked my respected 
friend, as Jemmy sat upon her lap and hugged her. 

No I Nobody ever quarrelled.” 

** And did the money never melt away ? ” 

No I Nobody could ever spend it all.” 

And did none of them ever grow older ? ” 

No I Nobody ever grew older after that.” 

** And did none of them ever die ? ” 


436 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS. 


** 0, no, no, no. Gran ! exclaimed our dear boy, lay- 
ing his cheek upon her breast, and drawing her closer to 
him. Nobody ever died.^^ 

Ah, Major, Major ! says my respected friend, smil- 
ing benignly upon me, this beats our stories. Let us 
end with the Boy^s story. Major, for the Boy^s story is 
the best that is ever told ! 

In submission to which request on the part of the best 
of women, I have here noted it down as faithfully as my 
best abilities, coupled with my best intentions, would 
admit, subscribing it with my name. 


The Parlors. 

Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings. 


J. JACKMAN. 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


IN TWO CHAPTERS. 


CHAPTER 1. 

MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND WENT OVER. 

Ah I It pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair 
rny dear though a little palpitating what with trotting 
up stairs and what with trotting down, and why kitchen 
stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to 
justify though I do not think they fully understand their 
trade and never did, else why the sameness and why not 
more conveniences and fewer draughts and likewise mak- 
ing a practice of laying the plaster on too thick I am well 
convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney- 
pots putting them on by guess-work like hats at a party 
and no more knowing what their effect will be upon the 
smoke bless you than I do if so much, except that it will 
mostly be either to send it down your throat in a straight 
form or give it a twist before it goes there. And what I 
says speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all 
manner of shapes (there ^s a row of ^em at Miss Wozen- 
ham’s lodging-house lower down on the other side of the 
way) is that they only work your smoke into artificial 
patterns for you before you swallow it and that I M quite 
as soon swallow mine plain, the flavor being the same, 
not to mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top 
of your house to show the forms in which you take your 
smoke into your inside. 

Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy- 
chair in my own quiet room in my own Lodging-House 
Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London situ- 
ated midway between the City and St. Jameses — if any- 
thing is where it used to be with these hotels calling them- 
selves Limited but called Unlimited by Major Jackman 


438 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


rising up everywhere and rising up into flagstaffs where 
they can^t go any higher, but my mind of those monsters 
is give me a landlord's or landlady's wholesome face when 
I come off a journey and not a brass plate with an elec- 
trified number clicking out of it which it ^s not in nature 
can be glad to see me and to which I don^t want to be 
hoisted like molasses at the Docks and left there telegraph- 
ing for help with the most ingenious instruments but quite 
in vain — being here my dear I have no call to mention 
that I am still in the Lodgings as a business hoping to die 
in the same and if agreeable to the clergy partly read 
over at Saint Clementes Danes and concluded in Hatfield 
churchyard when lying once again by my poor Lirriper 
ashes to ashes and dust to dust. 

Neither should I tell you any news my dear in telling 
you that the Major is still a fixture in the Parlors quite 
as much so as the roof of the house, and that Jemmy is 
of boys the best and brightest and has ever had kept 
from him the cruel story of his poor pretty young mother 
Mrs. Edson being deserted in the second floor and dying 
in my arms, fully believing that I am his born Gran and 
him an orphan, though what with engineering since he 
took a taste for it and him and the Major making Loco- 
motives out of parasols broken iron pots and cotton-reels 
and them absolutely a getting off the line and falling over 
the table and injuring the passengers almost equal to the 
originals it really is quite wonderful. And when I says 
to the Major, ‘‘ Major can’t you by any means give us a 
communication with the guard ? ” the Major says quite 
hufiy, ‘'No madam it ’s not to be done,” and when I says 
“ Why not ? ” the Major says, “ That is between us who 
are in the Railway Interest madam and our friend the 
Right Honorable Vice-President of the Board of Trade ” 
and if you ’ll believe me my dear the Major wrote to 
Jemmy at school to consult him on the answer I should 
have before I could get even that amount of unsatisfacto- 
riness out of the man, the reason being that when we 
first began with the little model and the working signals 
beautiful and perfect (being in general as wrong as the 
real) and when I says laughing “ What appointment am 
I to hold in this undertaking gentlemen ? ” Jemmy hugs 
me round the neck and tells me dancing, “You shall be 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


439 


the Public Gran and consequently they put upon me 
just as much as ever they like and I sit a growling in 
my easy-chair. 

My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as 
the Major cannot give half his heart and mind to any- 
thing — even a plaything — but must get into right 
down earnest with it, whether it is so or whether it is not 
so I do not undertake to say, but Jemmy is far outdone 
by the serious and believing ways of the Major in the 
management of the United Grand Junction Lirriper and 
Jackman Great Norfolk Parlor Line, For says my 
Jemmy with the sparkling eyes when it was christened, 
“ we must have a whole mouthful of name Gran or our 
dear old Public and there the young rogue kissed me, 
won^t stump up.^^ So the Public took the shares — ten 
at ninepence, and immediately when that was spent 
twelve Preference at one and sixpence — and they were 
all signed by Jemmy and countersigned by the Major, 
and between ourselves much better worth the money than 
some shares I have paid for in my time. In the same 
holidays the line was made and worked and opened and 
ran excursions and collisions and had burst its boilers and 
all sorts of accidents and oifences all most regular correct 
and pretty. The sense of responsibility entertained by 
the Major as a military style of station-master my dear 
starting the down train behind time and ringing one of 
those little bells that you buy with the little coal-scuttles 
off the tray round the man’s neck in the street did him 
honor, but noticing the Major of a night when he is writ- 
ing out his monthly report to Jemmy at school of the 
state of the Rolling Stock and the Permanent Way and 
all the rest of it (the whole kept upon the Major’s side- 
board and dusted with his own hands every morning be- 
fore varnishing his boots) I notice him as full of thought 
and care as full can be and frowning in a fearful manner, 
but indeed the Major does nothing by halves as witness 
his great delight in going out surveying with Jemmy 
when he has Jemmy to go with, carrying a chain and a 
measuring-tape and driving I don’t know what improve- 
ments right through Westminster Abbey and fully be- 
lieved in the streets to be knocking everything upside 
down by Act of Parliament. As please Heaven wiU 


440 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


come to pass when Jemmy takes to that as a profes- 
sion ! 

Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his 
own youngest brother the Doctor though Doctor of what I 
am sure it would be hard to say unless Liquor, for neither 
Physic nor Music nor yet Law does Joshua Lirriper know 
a morsel of except continually being summoned to the 
County Court and having orders made upon him which he 
runs away from, and once was taken in the passage of 
this very house with an umbrella up and the Major’s hat 
on, giving his name with the door-mat round him as Sir 
Johnson Jones K. C. B. in spectacles residing at the 
Horse Guards. On which occasion he had got into the 
house not a minute before, through the girl letting him 
on to the mat when he sent in a piece of paper twisted 
more like one of those spills for lighting candles than a 
note, offering me the choice between thirty shillings in 
hand and his brains on the premises marked immediate 
and waiting for an answer. My dear it gave me such a 
dreadful turn to think of the brains of my poor dear Lir- 
riper’s own flesh and blood flying about the new oilcloth 
however unworthy to be so assisted, that I went out of my 
room here to ask him what he would take once for all not 
to do it for life when I found him in the custody of two 
gentlemen that I should have judged to be in the feather- 
bed trade if they had not announced the law, so fluffy 
were their personal appearance. Bring your chains 
sir,” says Joshua to the littlest of the two in the biggest 
hat, ‘‘ rivet on my fetters 1 ” Imagine my feelings when 
I pictered him clanking up Norfolk Street in irons and 
Miss Wozenham looking out of window 1 Gentlemen,” 
I says all of a tremble and ready to drop ‘‘please to bring 
him into Major Jackman’s apartments.” So they brought 
him into the Parlors, and when the Major spies his own 
curly-brimmed hat on him which Joshua Lirriper had 
whipped off its peg in the passage for a military disguise 
he goes into such a tearing passion that he tips it off* his 
head with his hand and kicks it up to the ceiling with his 
foot where it grazed long afterwards. “ Major ” I says 
“be cool and advise pie what to do with Joshua my 
dead and gone Lirriper’ s own youngest brother.” “ Mad- 
am ” says the Major “ my advice is that you board and 


MRS. URRIPER’S LEGACY. 


441 


lodge him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to 
the proprietor when exploded. “ Major I says as a 
Christian you cannot mean your words. “ Madam 
says the Major ‘‘ by the Lord I do ! ’’ and indeed the 
Major besides being with all his merits a very passion- 
ate man for his size had a bad opinion of Joshua on ac- 
count of former troubles even unattended by liberties 
taken with his apparel. When Joshua Lirriper hears this 
conversation betwixt us he turns upon the littlest one 
with the biggest hat and says “ Come sir ! Remove me 
to my vile dungeon. Where is my mouldy straw ? 
My dear at the picter of him rising in my mind dressed 
almost entirely in padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy's 
book I was so overcome that I burst into tears and I says 
to the Major, Major take my keys and settle with these 
gentlemen or I shall never know a happy minute more," 
which was done several times both before and since, but 
still I must remember that Joshua Lirriper has his good 
feelings and shows them in being always so troubled in 
his mind when he cannot wear mourning for his brother. 
Many a long year have I left oft my widow's mourning 
not being wishful to intrude, but the tender point in 
Joshua that I cannot help a little yielding to is when he 
writes “ One single sovereign would enable me to wear a 
decent suit of mourning for my much-loved brother. I 
vowed at the time of his lamented death that I would 
ever wear sables in memory of him but Alas how short- 
sighted is man. How keep that vow when penniless ! " 
It says a good deal for the strength of his feelings that 
he could n't have been seven year old when my poor 
Lirriper died and to have kept to it ever since is highly 
creditable. But we know there 's good in all of us, — if 
we only knew where it was in some of us, — and though 
it was far from delicate in Joshua to work upon the dear 
child's feelings when first sent to school and write down 
into Lincolnshire for his pocket-money by return of post 
and got it, still he is my poor Lirriper's own youngest 
brother and might n't have meant not paying his bill at 
the Salisbury Arms when his affection took him down to 
stay a fortnight at Hatfield churchyard and might have 
meant to keep sober but for bad company. Consequently 
if the Major had played on him with the garden-engine 


i-42 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


which he got privately into his room without my knowing 
of it, I think that much as I should have regretted it 
there would have been words betwixt the Major and me. 
Therefore my dear though he played on Mr. Buffle by mis- 
take being hot in his head, and though it might have 
been misrepresented down at Wozenham’s into not being 
ready for Mr. Buffle in other respects he being the As- 
sessed Taxes, still I do not so much regret it as perhaps 
I ought. And whether Joshua Lirriper will yet do well 
in life I cannot say, but I did hear of his coming out at a 
Private Theatre in the character of a Bandit without re- 
ceiving any offers afterwards from the regular managers. 

Mentioning Mr. Buffle gives an instance of there being 
good in persons where good is not expected, for it can- 
not be denied that Mr. Buffle^s manners when engaged in 
his business were not agreeable. To collect is one thing, 
and to look about as if suspicious of the goods being 
gradually removing in the dead of the night by a back 
door is another, over taxing you have no control but sus- 
pecting is voluntary. Allowances too must ever be made 
for a gentleman of the Major’s warmth not relishing being 
spoke to with a pen in the mouth, and while I do not 
know that it is more irritable to my own feelings to have 
a low-crowned hat with a broad brim kept on in doors 
than any other hat still I can appreciate the Major’s, 
besides which without bearing malice or vengeance the 
Major is a man that scores up arrears as his habit always 
was with Joshua Lirriper. So at last my dear the Major 
lay in wait for Mr. Buffle and it worrited me a good deal. 
Mr. Buffle gives his rap of two sharp knocks one day and 
the Major bounces to the door. Collector has called 
for two quarters’ Assessed Taxes ” says Mr. Buffle. 
“ They are ready for him ” says the Major and brings 
him in here. But on the way Mr. Buffle looks about him 
in his usual suspicious manner and the Major fires and 
asks him Do you see a Ghost sir ? ” '' No sir ” says 

Mr. Buffle. '' Because I have before noticed you ” says 
the Major “ apparently looking for a spectre very hard 
beneath the roof of my respected friend. When you find 
that supernatural agent, be so good as point him out 
sir.” Mr. Buffle stares at the Major and then nods at 
me. ” Mrs. Lirriper sir ” says the Major going off into 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


443 


ct perfect steam and introducing me with his hand. 
“Pleasure of knowing her says Mr. Bufflo. “A — 
hum I — Jemmy Jackman sir I says the Major introdu- 
cing himself. “ Honor of knowing you by sight says 
Mr. Buffle. “Jemmy Jackman sir^^ says the Major wag- 
ging his head sideways in a sort of an obstinate fury “pre- 
sents to you his esteemed friend that lady Mrs. Emma 
Lirriper of Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London in 
the County of Middlesex in the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain and Ireland. Upon which occasion sir/^ says 
the Major, “ Jemmy Jackman takes your hat off.’^ Mr. 
Buflle looks at his hat where the Major drops it on the 
floor, and he picks it up and puts it on again. “ Sir 
says the Major very red and looking him full in the face 
“ there are two quarters of the Gallantry Taxes due and 
the Collector has called. Upon which if you can believe 
my words my dear the Major drops Mr. Buffle’s hat off 
again. “ This — Mr. Buffle begins very angry with 
his pen in his mouth, when the Major steaming more and 
more says “ Take you bit out sir 1 Or by the whole 
infernal system of Taxation of this country and every 
individual figure in the National Debt, I T1 get upon your 
back and ride you like a horse ! which it ’s my belief 
he would have done and even actually jerking his neat 
little legs ready for a spring as it was. “ This,’^ says 
Mr. Buffle without his pen “ is an assault and I T1 have 
the law of you.^^ “ Sir replies the Major “ if you are 
a man of honor, your Collector of whatever may be due 
on the Honorable Assessment by applying to Major Jack- 
man at The Parlors Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, may obtain 
what he wants in full at any moment. 

When the Major glared at Mr. Buffle with those mean- 
ing words my dear I literally gasped for a teaspoonful of 
sal-volatile in a wineglass of water, and I says “ Pray let 
it go no further gentlemen I beg and beseech of you 1 
But the Major could be got to do nothing else but snort 
long after Mr. Buffle was gone, and the effect it had upon 
my whole mass of blood when on the next day of Mr. 
Buffle’s rounds the Major spruced himself up and went 
humming a tune up and down the street with one eye 
almost obliterated by his hat there are not expressions in 
Johnson^s Dictionary to state. But I safely put the 


444 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


street door on the jar and got behind the Major^s blinds 
with my shawl on and my mind made up the moment I 
saw danger to rush out screeching till my voice failed me 
and catch the Major round the neck till my strength went 
and have all parties bound. I had not been behind the 
blinds a quarter of an hour when I saw Mr. Buffle ap- 
proaching with his Collecting-books in his hand. The 
Major likewise saw him approaching and hummed louder 
and himself approached. They met before the Airy rail- 
ings. The Major takes off his hat at arm^s length and 
says “ Mr. Buffle I believe ? Mr. Buffle takes off Ms 
hat at arm’s length and says “ That is my name sir.” 
Says the Major “ Have you any commands for me, Mr. 
Buffle ? ” Says Mr. Buffle “ Not any sir.” Then my 
dear both of ’em bowed very low and haughty and parted, 
and whenever Mr. Buffle made his rounds in future him 
and the Major always met and bowed before the Airy 
railings, putting me much in mind of Hamlet and tho 
other gentleman in mourning before killing one another, 
though I could have wished the other gentleman had 
done it fairer and even if less polite no poison. 

Mr. Buffle’s family were not liked in this neighborhood 
for when you are a householder my dear you ’ll find it 
does not come by nature to like the Assessed, and it was 
considered besides that a one-horse pheayton ought not 
to have elevated Mrs. Buffle to that heighth especially 
when purloined from the Taxes which I myself did con- 
sider uncharitable. But they were not liked and there 
was that domestic unhappiness in the family in conse- 
quence of their both being very hard with Miss Buffle 
and one another on account of Miss Buffle’s favoring Mr. 
Buffle’s articled young gentleman, that it teas whispered 
that Miss Buffle would go either into a consumption or a 
convent she being so very thin and off* her appetite and 
\wo close-shaved gentlemen with white bands round their 
necks peeping round the corner whenever she went out in 
waistcoats resembling black pinafores. So things stood 
towards Mr. Buffle when one night I was woke by a 
frightful noise and a smell of burning, and going to my 
bedroom window saw the whole street in a glow. For- 
tunately we had two sets empty just then and before I 
could hurry on some clothes I heard the Major hammer- 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


445 


ing at the attics^ doors and calling out “ Dress your- 
selves I — Fire I Don^t be frightened ! — Fire ! Collect 
your presence of mind ! — Fire I All right — Fire ! 
most tremenjously. As I opened my bedroom door the 
Major came tumbling in over himself and me, and caught 
me in his arms. ‘‘ Major ” I says breathless “ where is 
it ? ''I don’t know dearest madam ” says the Major 

— Fire! Jemmy Jackman will defend you to the last 
drop of his blood — Fire ! If the dear boy was at home 
what a treat this would be for him — Fire!” and •al- 
together very collected and bold except that he could n’t 
say a single sentence without shaking me to the very cen- 
tre with roaring Fire. We ran down to the drawing-room 
and put our heads out of window, and the Major calls to 
an unfeeling young monkey, scampering by be joyful and 
ready to split '' Where is it? — Fire!” The monkey 

answers without stopping “ 0 here ’s a lark ! Old Buffle ’s 
been setting his house alight to prevent its being found 
out that he boned the Taxes. Hurrah ! Fire ! ” And 
then the sparks came flying up and the smoke came pour- 
ing down and the brackling of flames and spatting of 
water and banging of engines and hacking of axes and 
breaking of glass and knocking at doors and the shouting 
and crying and hurrying and the heat and all together 
gave me a dreadful palpitation. Don’t be frightened 
dearest madam,” says the Major, “ — Fire! There’s 

nothing to be alarmed at — Fire ! Don’t open the street 
door till I come back — Fire ! I ’ll go and see if I can 
be of any service — Fire! You’re quite composed and 
comfortable ain’t you ? — Fire ! Fire, Fire ! ” It was in 
vain for me to hold the man and tell him he ’d be gal- 
loped to death by the engines — pumped to death by his 
over-exertions — wet-feeted to death by the slop and 
mess — flattened to death when the roofs fell in — his 
spirit was up and he went scampering off after the young 
monkey with all the breath he had and none to spare, 
and me and the girls huddled together at the parlor win- 
dows looking at the dreadful flames above the houses 
over the way, Mr. Buffle’s being round the corner. Pres- 
ently what should we see but some people running down 
the street straight to our door, and then the Major direct- 
ing operations in the busiest way, and then some more 


446 


MRS LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


people and then — carried in a chair similar to Guy 
Fawkes — Mr. Buffle in a blanket I 

My dear the Major has Mr. Buffle brought up our steps 
and whisked into the parlor and carted out on the sofy, 
and then he and all the rest of them without so much as 
a word burst away again full speed, leaving the impres- 
sion of a vision except for Mr. Buffle awful in his blanket 
with his eyes a rolling. In a twinkling they all burst 
back again with Mrs. Buffle in another blanket, which 
whisked in and carted out on the sofy they all burst off 
again and all burst back again with Miss Buffle in an- 
other blanket, which again whisked in and carted out they 
all burst off again and all burst back again with Mr. Biif- 
fle’s articled young gentleman in another blanket — him a 
holding round the necks of two men carrying him by the 
legs, similar to the picter of the disgraceful creetur who 
has lost the fight (but where the chair I do not know) 
and his hair having the appearance of newly played upon. 
When all four of a row, the Major rubs his hands and 
whispers me with what little hoarseness he can get to- 
gether, ‘‘ If our dear remarkable boy was only at home 
what a delightful treat this would be for him ! 

My dear we made them some hot tea and toast and 
some hot brandy-and-water with a little comfortable nut- 
meg in it, and at first they were scared and low in their 
spirits but being fully insured got sociable. And the 
first use Mr. Buffle made of his tongue was to call the 
Major his Preserver and his best of friends and to say 
“ My forever dearest sir let me make you known to Mrs. 
Buffle which also addressed him as her Preserver and 
her best of friends and was fully as cordial as the blanket 
would admit of. Also Miss Buffle. The articled young 
gentleman’s head was a little light and he sat a moaning 
“ Robina is reduced to cinders, Robina is reduced to cin- 
ders 1 ” Which went more to the heart on account of 
his having got wrapped in his blanket as if he was look- 
ing out of a violincell er case, until Mr. Buffle says Ro- 
bina speak to him 1 ” Miss Buffle says ‘‘ Dear George I ” 
and but for the Major’s pouring down brandy-and-watei 
on the instant which caused a catching in his throat owing 
to the nutmeg and a violent fit of coughing it might have 
proved too much for his strength. When the articled 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


447 


young gentleman got the better of it Mr. Buffle leaned 
up against Mrs. Buffle being two bundles, a little while 
in confidence, and then says with tears in his eyes which 
the Major noticing wiped, We have not been an united 
family, let us after this danger become so, take her 
George.’^ The young gentleman could not put his arm 
out far to do it, but his spoken expressions were very 
beautiful though of a wandering class. And I do not 
know that I ever had a much pleasanter meal than the 
breakfast we took together after we had all dozed, when 
Miss Buffle made tea very sweetly in quite the Roman 
style as depicted formerly at Covent Garden Theatre and 
when the whole family was most agreeable, as they have 
ever proved since that night when the Major stood at the 
foot of the Fire-Escape and claimed them as they came 
down — the young gentleman head-foremost, which ac- 
counts. And though I do not say that we should be less 
liable to think ill of one another if strictly limited to 
blankets, still I do say that we might most of us come to 
a better understanding if we kept one another less at a 
distance. 

Why there ^s Wozenham^s lower down on the other 
side of the street. I had a feeling of much soreness sev- 
eral years respecting what I must still ever call Miss 
Wozenham’s systematic underbidding and the likeness 
of the house in Bradshaw having far too many windows 
and a most umbrageous and outrageous Oak which never 
yet was seen in Norfolk Street nor yet a carriage and 
four at Wozenham^s door, which it would have been far 
more to Bradshaw^s credit to have drawn a cab. This 
frame of mind continued bitter down to the very afternoon 
in January last when one of my girls, Sally Rairyganoo 
which I still suspect of Irish extraction though family 
represented Cambridge, else why abscond with a brick- 
layer of the Limerick persuasion and be married in pat- 
tens not waiting till his black eye was decently got round 
with all the company fourteen in number and one horse 
fighting outside on the roof of the vehicle, — I repeat my 
dear my ill-regulated state of mind towards Miss W ozen- 
ham continued down to the very afternoon of January 
last past when Sally Rairyganoo came banging (I can 
use no milder expression) into my room with a jump 


448 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


which may be Cambridge and may not, and said ‘ ‘ Hurroo 
Missis I Miss Wozenham ^s sold up ! My dear when I 
had it thrown in my face and conscience that the girl Sally 
had reason to think I could be glad of the ruin of a fellow- 
creeter, I burst into tears and dropped back in my chair 
and I says “ I am ashamed of myself! 

Well! I tried to settle to my tea but I could not do 
it what with thinking of Miss Wozenham and her dis- 
tresses. It was a wretched night and I went up to a 
front window and looked over at Wozenham^s and as 
well as I could make it out down the street in the fog it 
was the dismallest of the dismal and not a light to be 
seen. So at last I says to myself This will not do,^^ 
and I puts on my oldest bonnet and shawl not wishing 
Miss Wozenham to be reminded of my best at such a 
time, and lo and behold you I goes over to Wozenham^s 
and knocks. ‘‘ Miss Wozenham at home ? I says turn- 
ing my head when I heard the door go. And then I saw 
it was Miss Wozenham herself who had opened it and 
sadly worn she was poor thing and her eyes all swelled 
and swelled with crying. Miss Wozenham I says 
“it is several years since there was a little unpleasant- 
ness betwixt us on the subject of my grandson’s cap being 
down your Airy. I have overlooked it and I hope you 
have done the same.” “Yes Mrs. Lirriper” she says 
in a surprise “ I have.” “ Then my dear ” 1 says “ I 
should be glad to come in and speak a word to you.” Up- 
on my calling her my dear Miss Wozenham breaks out a 
crying most pitiful, and a not unfeeling elderly person 
that might have been better shaved in a nightcap with a 
hat over it offering a polite apology for the mumps having 
worked themselves into his constitution, and also for 
sending home to his wife on the bellows which was in his 
hand as a writing-desk, looks out of the back parlor and 
says “The lady wants a word of comfort” and goes in 
again. So I was able to say quite natural “ Wants a 
word of comfort does she sir ? Then please the pigs she 
shall have it! ” And Miss Wozenham and me we go into 
the front room with a wretched light that seemed to have 
been crying too and was sputtering out, and I says “ Now 
my dear, tell me all,” and she wrings her hands and says 
“ 0 Mrs. Lirriper that man is in possession here, and I 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


449 


have not a friend in the world who is able to help me 
with a shilling.’’ 

It does n’t signify a bit what a talkative old body like 
me said to Miss Wozenham when she said that, and so 
I ’ll tell you instead my dear that I ’d have given thirty 
shillings to have taken her over to tea, only I durst n’t 
on account of the Major. Not you see but what I knew 
I could draw the Major out like thread and wind him 
round my finger on most subjects and perhaps even on 
that if I was to set myself to it, but him and me had so 
often belied Miss Wozenham to one another that I was 
shamefaced, and I knew she had offended his pride and nev- 
er mine, and likewise I felt timid that that Rairyganoo girl 
might make things awkward. So I says “ My dear if you 
could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head 
I should better understand your affairs.” And we had 
the tea and the affairs too and after all it was but forty 
pound, and — There I she ’s as industrious and straight 
a creeter as ever lived and has paid back half of it already, 
and where ’s the use of saying more, particularly when 
it ain’t the point ? For the point is that when she was a 
kissing my hands and holding them in hers and kissing 
them again and blessing blessing blessing, I cheered up 
at last and I says “ Why what a waddling old goose I 
have been my dear to take you for something so very dif- 
ferent 1 ” “ Ah but I too ” says she ‘‘ how have I mis- 
taken you! ” “ Come for goodness’ sake tell me ” I says 

** what you thought of me ? ” Oh ” says she ‘‘ I thought 
you had no feeling for such a hard hand-to-mouth life as 
mine, and were rolling in affluence.” I says shaking 
my sides (and very glad to do it for I had been a choking 
quite long enough) Only look at my figure my dear and 
give me your opinion whether if I was in affluence I 
should be likely to roll in it I ” That did it ! We got 
as merry as grigs (whatever they are, if you happen to 
know my dear — 1 don’t) and I went home to my blessed 
nome as happy and as thankful as could be. But before 
I make an end of it, think even of my having misunder- 
stood the Major I Yes ! For next forenoon the Major 
came into my little room with his brushed hat in his hand 
and he begins ''My dearest madam — ” and then put 
his face in his hat as if he had just come into church. 


450 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


As I sat all in a maze he came out of his hat and began 
again. My esteemed and beloved friend — and then 
went into his hat again. “ Major/^ I cries out frightened 
“ has anything happened to our darling boy ? “ No, 

no, no says the Major ‘‘but Miss Wozenham has been 
here this morning to make her excuses to me, and by the 
Lord I can^t get over what she told me.^^ “ Hoity toity. 

Major, I says “you don’t know yet that I was afraid of 
you last night and did n’t think half as well of you as I 
ought I So come out of church Major and forgive me 
like a dear old friend and I ’ll never do so any more.” 
And I leave you to judge my dear whether I ever did or 
will. And how affecting to think of Miss Wozenham out 
of her small income and her losses doing so much for her 
poor old father, and keeping a brother that had had the 
misfortune to soften his brain against the hard mathemat- 
ics as neat as a new pin in the three back represented to 
lodgers as a lumber-room and consuming a whole shoul- 
der of mutton whenever provided I 

And now my dear I really am a going to tell you about 
my Legacy if you ’re inclined to favor me with your at- 
tention, and I did fully intend to have come straight to 
it only one thing does so bring up another. It was the 
month of June and the day before Midsummer Lay when 
my girl Winifred Madgers — she was what is termed a 
Plymouth Sister, and the Plymouth Brother that made 
away with her was quite right, for a tidier young woman 
for a wife never came into a house and afterwards called 
with the beautifullest Plymouth Twins — it was the day 
before Midsummer Lay when Winifred Madgers comes 
and says to me “ A gentleman from the Consul’s wishes 
particular to speak to Mrs. Lirriper.” If you ’ll believe 
me my dear the Consols at the bank where I have a little 
matter for Jemmy got into my head, and I says “ Good 
gracious I hope he ain’t had any dreadful fall ! ” Says 
Winifred “ He don’t look as if he had ma’am.” And I 
says “ Show him in.” 

The gentleman came in dark and with his hair cropped 
what I should consider too close, and he says very polite 
“ Madame Lirrwiper I ” I says “ Yes sir Take a chair.” 
“ I come,” says he “ frrwomthe Frrwench Consul’s ” So 
I saw at once that it was n’t the Bank of England 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


451 


“ We have rrweceived/^ says the gentleman turning his 
r^s very curious and skilful, frrwom the Mairrwie at 
Sens, a communication which I will have the honor to 
rrwead. Madame Lirrwiper understands Frrwench ? 

0 dear no sir I says I. “ Madame Lirriper don^t 
understand anything of the sort.^^ “ It matters not,^^ 
says the gentleman, “ I will trrwanslate.^^ 

With that my dear the gentleman after reading some- 
thing about a Department and a Mairie (which Lord for- 
give me I supposed till the Major came home was Mary, 
and never was I more puzzled than to think how that 
young woman came to have so much to do with it) trans- 
lated a lot with the most obliging pains, and it came to 
this : — That in the town of Sens in France an unknown 
Englishman lay a dying. That he was speechless and 
without motion. That in his lodging there was a gold 
watch and a purse containing such and such money and 
a trunk containing such and such clothes, but no pass- 
port and no papers, except that on his table was a pack 
of cards and that he had written in pencil on the back 
of the ace of hearts : ‘‘To the authorities. When I am 
dead, pray send what is left, as a last Legacy, to Mrs. Lir- 
riper Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London. When 
the gentleman had explained all this, which seemed to be 
drawn up much more methodical than I should have giv- 
en the French credit for, not at that time knowing the 
nation, he put the document into my hand. And much 
the wiser I was for that you may be sure, except that it 
had the look of being made out upon grocery paper and 
was stamped all over with eagles. 

“ Does Madame Lirrwiper says the gentleman “ be- 
lieve she rrwecognizes her unfortunate compatrrwiot ? 

You may imagine the flurry it put me into my dear to 
be talked to about my compatriots. 

1 says “ Excuse me. Would you have the kindness 
sir to made your language as simple as you can ? 

“ This Englishman unhappy, at the point of death. 
This compatrrwiot afflicted, says the gentleman. 

“ Thank you sir I says “ I understand you now. No 
sir I have not the least idea who this can be.^^ 

“Has Madame Lirrwiper no son, no nephew, no godson, 
no frrwiend no acquaintance of any kind in Frrwance ? '' 


452 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


** To my certain knowledge says I no relation or 
friend, and to the best of my belief no acquaintance.^^ 
Pardon me. You take Locataires ? says the gen- 
tleman. 

My dear fully believing he was offering me something 
with his obliging foreign manners, — snuff* for anything I 
knew, — I gave a little bend of my head and I says if 
you ^11 credit it, No I thank you. I have not contracted 
the habit. 

The gentleman looks perplexed and says “ Lodgers ? 
Oh I says I laughing. Bless the man I Why 
yes to be sure 1 

“ May it not be a former lodger ? says the gentle- 
man. “ Some lodger that you pardoned some rrwent ? 
You have pardoned lodgers some rrwent ? 

“ Hem I It has happened sir says I, “ but I assure 
you I can call to mind no gentleman of that description 
that this is at all likely to be.^^ 

In short my dear we could make nothing of it, and the 
gentleman noted down what I said and went away. But 
he left me the paper of which he had two with him, and 
when the Major came in I says to the Major as I put it in 
his hand “ Major here ^s Old Moore’s Almanac with the 
hieroglyphic complete, for your opinion.” 

It took the Major a little longer to read than I should 
have thought, judging from the copious flow with which 
he seemed to be gifted when attacking the organ-men, 
but at last he got through it and stood a gazing at me in 
amazement. 

“ Major ” I says you ’re paralyzed.” 

Madam ” says the Major, “ Jemmy Jackman is doub- 
led up.” 

Now it did so happen that the Major had been out to 
get a little information about railroads and steamboats, as 
our boy was coming home for his Midsummer holidays 
next day, and we were going to take him somewhere for 
a treat and a change. So while the Major stood a gazing 
it came into my head to say to him Major I wish you ’d 
go and look at some of your books and maps, and see 
whereabouts this same town of Sens is in France.” 

The Major he roused himself and he went into the Par- 
lors and he poked about a little, and he came back to me 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


453 


and he says, “ Sens my dearest madam is se’venty-odd 
miles south of Paris 

With what I may truly call a desperate effort “Major 
I says “ we ffl go there with our blessed boy ! 

If ever the Major was beside himself it was at the 
thoughts of that journey. All day long he was like the 
wild man of the woods after meeting with an advertise- 
ment in the papers telling him something to his advan- 
tage, and early next morning hours before Jemmy could 
possibly come home he was outside in the street ready 
to call out to him that we was all a going to France. 
Young Rosy-cheeks you may believe was as wild as the 
Major, and they did carry on to that degree that I says 
“ If you two children ainH more orderly I ^11 pack you 
both off to bed.^^ And then they fell to cleaning up the 
Major’s telescope to see France with, and went out and 
bought a leather bag with a snap to hang round Jemmy, 
and him to carry the money like a little Fortunatus with 
his purse. 

If I had n’t passed my word and raised their hopes, I 
doubt if I could have gone through with the undertaking 
but it was too late to go back now. So on the second 
day after Midsummer Day we went off by the morning 
mail. And when we came to the sea which I had never 
seen but once in my life and that when my poor Lirriper 
was courting me, the freshness of it and the deepness 
and the airiness and to think that it had been rolling ever 
since and that it was always a rolling and so few of us 
minding, made me feel quite serious. But I felt happy 
too and so did Jemmy and the Major and not much mo- 
tion on the whole, though me with a swimming in the 
head and a sinking but able to take notice that the for- 
eign insides appear to be constructed hollower than the 
English, leading to much more tremenjous noises when 
bad sailors. 

But my dear the blueness and the lightness and the 
colored look of everything and the very sentry-boxes 
striped and the shining rattling drums and the little sol- 
diers with their waists and tidy gaiters, when we got 
across to the Continent — it made me feel as if I don’t 
know what — as if the atmosphere had been lifted off 
me. And as to lunch why bless you if I kept a man 


454 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


cook and two kitchen-maids I could n^t get it done for 
twice the money, and no injured young women a glaring 
at you and grudging you and acknowledging your pat- 
ronage by wishing that j^our food might choke you, but 
80 civil and so hot and attentive and every way comfort- 
able except Jemmy pouring wine down his throat by tum- 
blers-full and me expecting to see him drop under the 
table. 

And the way in which Jemmy spoke his French was a 
real charm. It was often wanted of him, for whenever 
anybody spoke a syllable to me I says ‘^Noncomprenny, 
you ^re very kind but it ^s no use — Now Jemmy I and 
then Jemmy he fires away at ^em lovely, the only thing 
wanting in Jemmy ^s French being as it appeared to me 
that he hardly ever understood a word of what they said 
to him which made it scarcely of the use it might have 
been though in other respects a perfect Native, and re- 
garding the Major’s fiuency I should have been of the 
opinion judging French by English that there might have 
been a greater choice of words in the language though 
still I must admit that if I had n’t known him when he 
asked a military gentleman in a gray cloak what o’clock 
it was I should have took him for a Frenchman born. 

Before going on to look after my Legacy we were to 
make one regular day in Paris, and I leave you to judge 
my dear what a day that was with Jemmy and the Major 
and the telescope and me and the prowling young man at 
the inn door (but very civil too) that went along with us 
to show the sights. All along the railway to Paris 
Jemmy and the Major had been frightening me to death 
by stooping down on the platforms at stations to inspect 
the engines underneath their mechanical stomachs, and 
by creeping in and out I don’t know where all, to find 
improvements for the United Grand Junction Parlor, 
but when we got out into the brilliant streets on a 
bright morning they gave up all their London improve- 
ments as a bad job and gave their minds to Paris. Says 
the prowling young man to me Will I speak Inglis 
No ? ” So I says “ If you can young man I shall take 
it as a favor,” but after half an hour of it when I fully 
believed the man had gone mad and me too I says “ Be 
so good as fall back on your French sir,” knowing that 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


455 


then I should n^t have the agonies of trying to understand 
him which was a happy release. Not that I lost much 
more than the rest either, for I generally noticed that 
when he had described something very long indeed and I 
says to Jemmy ‘‘ What does he say Jemmy ? Jemmy 
says looking at him with vengeance in his eye “ He is so 
jolly indistinct I and that when he had described it 
longer all over again and I says to Jemmy “ Well Jemmy 
what ^s it all about ? ’’ Jemmy says ‘‘ He says the build- 
ing was repaired in seventeen hundred and four, Gran.^^ 

Wherever that prowling young man formed his prowl- 
ing habits I cannot be expected to know, but the way in 
which he went round the corner while we had our break- 
fasts and was there again when we swallowed the last 
crumb was most marvellous, and just the same at dinner 
and at night, prowling equally at the theatre and the inn 
gateway and the shop doors when we bought a trifle or 
two and everywhere else but troubled with a tendency to 
spit. And of Paris I can tell you no more my dear than 
that it ’s town and country both in one, and carved stone 
and long streets of high houses and gardens and foun- 
tains and statues and trees and gold, and immensely big 
soldiers and immensely little soldiers and the pleasantest 
nurses with the whitest caps a playing at skipping-rope 
with the bunchiest babies in the flattest caps, and clean 
table-cloths spread everywhere for dinner and people sit- 
ting out of doors smoking and sipping all day long and 
little plays being acted in the open air for little people 
and every shop a complete and elegant room, and every- 
body seeming to play at everything in this world. And 
as to the sparkling lights my dear after dark, glittering 
high up and low down and on before and on behind and 
all round, and the crowd of theatres and the crowd of 
people and the crowd of all sorts, it ^s pure enchantment. 
And pretty well the only thing that grated on me was 
that whether you pay your fare at the railway or whether 
you change your money at a money-dealer^s or whether 
you take your ticket at the theatre, the lady or gentleman 
is caged up (I suppose by government) behind the strong- 
est iron bars having more of a Zoological appearance than 
a free country. 

Well to be sure when I did after all get my precious 


456 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACr. 


bones to bed that night, and my Young Kogue came in 
to kiss me and asks “ What do you think of this lovely 
lovely Paris, Gran ? I says '' Jemmy I feel as if it was 
beautiful fire-works being let olf in my head.^^ And 
very cool and refreshing the pleasant country was next 
day when we went on to look after my Legacy, and 
rested me much and did me a deal of good. 

So at length and at last my dear we come to Sens, 
a pretty little town with a great two-towered cathedral 
and the rooks flying in and out of the loop-holes and 
another tower atop of one of the towers like a sort of a 
stone pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming 
below him if you ^11 believe me, I saw a speck while I 
was resting at the inn before dinner which they made 
signs to me was Jemmy and which really was. I had 
been a fancying as I sat in the balcony of the hotel that 
an Angel might light there and call down to the people 
to be good, but I little thought what Jemmy all unknown 
to himself was a calling down from that high place to 
some one in the town. 

The pleasantest-situated inn my dear I Right under 
the two towers, with their shadows a changing upon it 
all day like a kind of a sundial, and country people driv- 
ing in and out of the court-yard in carts and hooded cab- 
riolets and such like, and a market outside in front of 
the cathedral, and all so quaint and like a picter. The 
Major and me agreed that whatever came of my Legacy 
this was the place to stay in for our holiday, and we 
also agreed that our dear boy had best not be checked in 
his joy that night by the sight of the Englishman if he 
was still alive, but that we would go together and alone. 
For you are to understand that the Major not feeling him- 
self quite equal in his wind to the heigh th to which Jem- 
my had climbed, had come back to me and left him with 
the Guide. 

So after dinner when Jemmy had set off to see the 
river, the Major went down to the Mairie, and presently 
came back with a military character in a sword and spurs 
and a cocked hat and a yellow shoulder-belt and long 
tags about him that he must have found inconvenient. 
And the Major says “ The Englishman still lies in thf^ 
same state dearest madam. This gentleman will conduct 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


457 


US to his lodging. Upon which the military character 
pulled off his cocked hat to me, and I took notice that 
he had shaved his forehead in imitation of Napoleon Bo- 
naparte but not like. 

We wont out at the court-yard gate and past the great 
doors of the cathedral and down a narrow High Street 
where the people were sitting chatting at their shop doors 
and the children were at play. The military character 
went in front and he stopped at a pork-shop with a little 
statue of a pig sitting up, in the window, and a private 
door that a donkey was looking out of. 

When the donkey saw the military character he came 
slipping out on the pavement to turn round and then clat- 
tered along the passage into a back yard. So the coast 
being clear, the Major and me were conducted up the 
common stair and into the front room on the second, a 
bare room with a red tiled floor and the outside lattice 
blinds pulled close to darken it. As the military charac- 
ter opened the blinds I saw the tower where I had seen 
Jemmy, darkening as the sun got low, and I turned to 
the bed by the wall and saw the Englishman. 

It was some kind of brain fever he had had, and his 
hair was all gone, and some wetted folded linen lay upon 
his head. I looked at him very attentive as he lay there 
all wasted away with his eyes closed, and I says to the 
Major 

I never saw this face before.^^ 

The Major looked at him very attentive too, and he 
says 

“ I never saw this face before. 

When the Major explained our words to the military 
character, that gentleman shrugged his shoulders and 
showed the Major the card on which it was written about 
the Legacy for me. It had- been written with a weak 
and trembling hand in bed, and I knew no more of the 
writing than of the face. Neither did the Major. 

Though lying there alone, the poor creetur was as well 
taken care of as could be hoped, and would have been 
quite unconscious of any one’s sitting by him then. I 
got the Major to say that we were not going away at 
present and that I would come back to-morrow and watch 
a bit by the bedside. But I got him to add— -and I 


458 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


shook my head hard to make it stronger - • We agree 
that we never saw this face before. 

Our boy was greatly surprised when we told him sit- 
ting out in the balcony in the starlight, and he ran over 
some of those stories of former Lodgers, of the Major’s 
putting down, and asked was n’t it possible that it might 
be this lodger or that lodger. It was not possible, and 
we went to bed. 

In the morning just at breakfast-time the military char- 
acter came jingling round, and said that the doctor 
thought from the signs he saw there might be some rally 
before the end. So I says to the Major and Jemmy, 

You two boys go and enjoy yourselves, and I ’ll take 
my Prayer-Book and go sit by the bed.” So I went, and 
I sat there some hours, reading a prayer for him poor 
soul now and then, and it was quite on in the day when 
he moved his hand. 

He had been so still, that the moment he moved I 
knew of it, and I pulled off my spectacles and laid down 
my book and rose and looked at him. From moving one 
hand he began to move both, and then his action was the 
action of a person groping in the dark. Long after his 
eyes had opened, there was a film over them and he still 
felt for his way out into light. But by slow degrees his 
sight cleared and his hands stopped. He saw the ceiling, 
he saw the wall, he saw me. As his sight cleared, mine 
cleared too, and when at last we looked in one another’s 
faces, I started back and I cries passionately : — 

“ 0 you wicked wicked man I Your sin has found you 
out I ” 

For I knew him, the moment life looked out of his eyes, 
to be Mr. Edson, Jemmy’s father who had so cruelly de- 
serted Jemmy’s young unmarried mother who had died 
in my arms, poor tender creetur, and left Jemmy to 
mo. 

You cruel wicked man I You bad black traitor ! ” 

With the little strength he had, he made an attempt to 
turn over on his wretched face to hide it. His arm 
dropped out of the bed and his head with it, and there 
he lay before me crushed in body and in mind. Surely 
the miserablest sight under the summer sun ! 

** 0 blessed Heaven,” I says a crying, “teach me 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


459 


what to say to this broken mortal I I am a poor sinful 
creetur, and the Judgment is not mine.^^ 

As I lifted my eyes up to the clear bright sky, I saw 
the high tower where Jemmy had stood above the birds, 
seeing that very window ; and the last look of that poor 
pretty young mother when her soul brightened and got 
free, seemed to shine down from it. 

“ 0 man, man, man I I says, and I went on my knees 
beside the bed ; '‘if your heart is rent asunder and you 
are truly penitent for what you did. Our Saviour will have 
mercy on you yet I 

As I leaned my face against the bed, his feeble hand 
could just move itself enough to touch me. I hope the 
touch was penitent. It tried to hold my dress and keep 
hold, but the fingers were too weak to close. 

I lifted him back upon the pillows, and I says to him, — 

" Can you hear me ? 

He looked yes. 

" Do you know me ? 

He looked yes, even yet more plainly. 

“ I am not here alone. The Major is with me. You 
recollect the Major ? 

Yes. That is to say he made out yes, in the same 
way as before. 

" And even the Major and I are not alone. My grand- 
son — his godson — is with us. Do you hear ? My 
grandson. 

The fingers made another trial to catch at my sleeve, 
but could only creep near it and fall. 

“ Do you know who my grandson is ? 

Yes. 

" I pitied and loved his lonely mother. When his 
mother lay a dying I said to her, ‘ My dear, this baby is 
sent to a childless old woman. ^ He has been my pride 
and joy ever since. I love him as dearly as if he had 
drunk from my breast. Do you ask to see my grandson 
before you die ? 

Yes. 

" Show me, when I leave off speaking, if you correctly 
understand what I say. He has been kept unacquainted 
with the story of his birth. He has no knowledge of it. 
No suspicion of it. If I bring him here to the side of this 


160 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


bed, he will suppose you to be a perfect stranger. It is 
more than I can do, to keep from him the knowledge that 
there is such wrong and misery in the world ; but that it 
was ever so near him in his innocent cradle, I have kept 
from him, and I do keep from him, and I ever will keep 
from him. For his mother^s sake, and for his own.’^ 

He showed me that he distinctly understood, and the 
tears fell from his eyes. 

“Now rest, and you shall see him.^’ 

So I got him a little wine and some brandy and I put 
things straight about his bed. But I began to be troubled 
in my mind lest Jemmy and the Major might be too long 
of coming back. What with this occupation for my 
thoughts and hands, I did n^t hear a foot upon the stairs, 
and was startled when I saw the Major stopped short in 
the middle of the room by the eyes of the man upon the 
bed, and knowing him then, as I had known him a little 
while ago. 

There was anger in the Major’s face, and there was 
horror and repugnance and I don’t know what. So I 
went up to him and I led him to the bedside and when I 
clasped my hands and lifted of them up, the Major did the 
like. 

“ 0 Lord ” I says “ Thou knowest what we two saw 
together of the sufferings and sorrows of that young 
creetur now with Thee. If this dying man is tnily peni- 
tent, we two together humbly pray Thee to have mercy 
on him ! ” 

The Major says “ Amen I ” and then after a little stop 
I whispers him, “ Dear old friend fetch our beloved boy.” 
And the Major, so clever as to have got to understand it 
all without being told a word, went away and brought 
him. 

Never never never shall I forget the fair bright face of 
our boy when he stood at the foot of the bed, looking at 
his unknown father. And 0 so like his dear young 
mother then I 

“ Jemmy ” I says, “ I have found out all about this 
poor gentleman who is so ill, and he did lodge in the old 
house once. And as he wants to see all belonging to it, 
now that he is passing away, I sent for you.” 

“Ah poor man I ” says Jemmy stepping forward and 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


461 


touching one of his hands with great gentleness. My 
heart melts for him. Poor, poor man I 

The eyes that were so soon to close forever, turned to 
me, and I was not that strong in the pride of my strength 
that I could resist them. 

“ My darling boy, there is a reason in the secret his- 
tory of this fellow-creetur, lying as the best and worst of 
us must all lie one day, which 1 think would ease bis 
spirit in his last hour if you would lay your cheek against 
his forehead and say, ^ May God forgive you I ^ 

‘‘ 0 Gran,^^ says Jemmy with a full heart ‘‘ I am not 
worthy I But he leaned down and did it. Then the 
faltering fingers made out to catch hold of my sleeve at 
last, and I believe he was a trying to kiss me when he 
died. 

:f: ^ 

There my dear I There you have the story of my Leg- 
acy in full, and it ^s worth ten times the trouble I have 
spent upon it if you are pleased to like it. 

You might suppose that it set us against the little 
French town of Sens, but no we did n^t find that. I found 
myself that I never looked up at the high tower atop of 
the other tower, but the days came back again when that 
fair young creetur with her pretty bright hair trusted in 
me like a mother, and the recollection made the place so 
peaceful to me as I can't express. And every soul about 
the hotel down to the pigeons in the court-yard made 
friends with Jemmy and the Major, and went lumbering 
away with them on all sorts of expeditions in all sorts of 
vehicles drawn by rampagious cart-horses, — with heads 
and without, — mud for paint and ropes for harness, — 
and every new friend dressed in blue like a butcher, and 
every new horse standing on his hind legs wanting to de- 
vour and consume every other horse, and every man that 
had a whip to crack crack-crack-crack-crack-cracking it as 
if it was a school-boy with his first. As to the Major my 
dear that man lived the greater part of his time with a 
little tumbler in one hand and a bottle of small wine in 
the other, and whenever he saw anybody else with a little 
tumbler, no matter who it was, — the military character 
with the tags, or the inn servants at their supper in the 
«ourt-yard, or townspeople a chatting on a bench, or 


462 


MRS. LIKRIPER’S LEGACY. 


country people a starting home after market, — down 
rushes the Major to clink his glass against their glasses 
and cry, — Hola ! Vive Somebody I or Vive Something I 
as if he was beside himself. And though I could not 
quite approve of the Major’s doing it, still the ways of 
the world are the ways of the world varying according to 
different parts of it, and dancing at all in the open Square 
with a lady that kept a barber’s shop my opinion is that 
the Major was right to dance his best and to lead off with 
a power that I did not think was in him, though I was a 
little uneasy at the Barricading sound of the cries that 
were set up by the other dancers and the rest of the com- 
pany, until when I says What are they ever calling out 
Jemmy ? ” Jemmy says, “ They ’re calling out Gran, Bra- 
vo the Military English I Bravo the Military English 1 ” 
which was very gratifying to my feelings as a Briton and 
became the name the Majot was known by. 

But every evening at a regular time we all three sat 
out in the balcony of the hotel at the end of the court- 
yard, looking up at the golden and rosy light as it 
changed on the great towers, and looking at the shadows 
of the towers as they changed on all about us ourselves 
included, and what do you think we did there ? My dear, 
if Jemmy hadn’t brought some other of those stories of 
the Major’s taking down from the telling of former lodg- 
ers at Eighty-one Norfolk Street, and if he did n’t bring 
’em out with this speech : — 

‘‘ Here you are Gran I Here you are godfather I More 
of ’em I /’ll read. And though you wrote ’em for me, 
godfather, I know you won’t disapprove of my making 
’em over to Gran ; will you ? ” 

‘‘ No my dear boy,” says the Major. '' Everything we 
have is hers, and we are hers.” 

^‘Hers ever affectionately and devotedly J. Jackman, 
and J. Jackman Lirriper,” cries the Young Eogue giving 
me a close hug. “ Very well then godfather. Look 
here. As Gran is in the Legacy way just now, I shall 
make these stories a part of Gran’s Legacy. I ’ll leave 
’em to her. What do you say godfather ? ” 

Hip hip Hurrah I ” says the Major. 

Very well then,” cries Jemmy all in a bustle. “ Vive 
the Military English I Vive the Lady Lirriper I Vive 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


463 


the Jemmy Jackman Ditto I Vive the Legacy I Now 
you look out, Gran. And you look out, godfather, /’ll 
read I And I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do besides. On the 
last night of our holiday here when we are all packed 
and going away, I ’ll top up with something of my own.” 

** Mind you do sir ” says I. 


464 


MRS. LIRRIPRR’S LEGACY. 


CHAPTER n. 

MRS. URRIPER RELATES HOW JEMMY TOPPED UP. 

Well my dear and so the evening readings of those 
jottings of the Major’s brought us round at last to the 
evening when we were all packed and going away next 
day, and I do assure you that by that time though it was 
deliciously comfortable to look forward to the dear old 
house in Norfolk Street again, I had formed quite a high 
opinion of the French nation and had noticed them to be 
much more homely and domestic in their families and far 
more simple and amiable in their lives than I had ever 
been led to expect, and it did strike me between ourselves 
that in one particular they might be imitated to advan- 
tage by another nation which I will not mention, and that 
is in the courage with which they take their little enjoy- 
ments on little means and with little things and don’t let 
solemn big-wigs stare them out of countenance or speech- 
ify them dull, of which said solemn big-wigs I have ever 
had the one opinion that I wish they were all made com- 
fortable separately in coppers with the lids on and never 
let out any more. 

“ Now young man,” I says to Jemmy when we brought 
our chairs into the balcony that last evening, “ you 
please to remember who was to * top up.’ ” 

** All right Gran ” says Jemmy. I am the illustrious 
personage.” 

But he looked so serious after he had made me that 
light answer, that the Major raised his eyebrows at me 
and I raised mine at the Major. 

** Gran and godfather,” says Jemmy, you can hardly 
think how much my mind has run on Mr. Edson’s death.” 

It gave me a little check. “ Ah I It was a sad scene 
my love ” I says, and sad remembrances come back 
stronger than merry. But this” I says after a little 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


465 


silence, to rouse myself and the Major and Jemmy all to- 
gether, is not topping up. Tell us your story my dear.^^ 

I will says Jemmy. 

What is the date sir ? says I. Once upon a time 
when pigs drank wine ? ” 

No Gran,^^ says Jemmy, still serious ; once upon a 
time when the French drank wine.^^ 

Again I glanced at the Major, and the Major glanced 
at me. 

In short Gran and godfather,^^ says Jemmy, looking 
up, the date is this time, and I ^m going to tell you Mr 
Edson^s story.^^ 

The flutter that it threw me into I The change of color 
on the part of the Major I 

That is to say, you understand,” our bright-eyed boy 
says, “ I am going to give you my version of it. I shall 
not ask whether it ’s right or not, firstly because you said 
you knew very little about it. Gran, and secondly because 
what little you did know was a secret.” 

I folded my hands in my lap and I never took my eyes 
off Jemmy as he went running on. 

** The unfortunate gentleman ” Jemmy commences, 
** who is the subject of our present narrative was the son 
of Somebody, and was born Somewhere, and chose a 
profession Somehow. It is not with those parts of his 
career that we have to deal ; but with his early attach- 
ment to a young and beautiful lady.” 

I thought I should have dropped. I durst n^t look at 
the Major ; but I knew what his state was, without look- 
ing at him. 

The father of our ill-starred hero ” says Jemmy, copy- 
ing as it seemed to me the style of some of his story- 
books, was a worldly man who entertained ambitious 
views for his only son and who firmly set his face against 
the contemplated alliance with a virtuous but penniless 
orphan. Indeed he went so far as roundly to assure our 
hero that unless he weaned his thoughts from the object 
of his devoted affection, he would disinherit him. At 
the same time, he proposed as a suitable match the daugh- 
ter of a neighboring gentleman of a good estate, who was 
neither ill-favored nor unamiable, and whose eligibility in 
a pecuniary point of view could not be disputed. But 


166 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


young* Mr. Edson, true to the first and only love that had 
inflamed his breast, rejected all considerations of self- 
advancement, and, deprecating his father's anger in a re- 
spectful letter, ran away with her." 

My dear I had begun to take a turn for the better, but 
when it come to running away I began to take another 
turn for the worse. 

The lovers " says Jemmy “fled to London and were 
united at the altar of Saint Clement's Danes. And it is 
at this period of their simple but touching story, that we 
find them inmates of the dwelling of a highly respected 
and beloved lady of the name of Gran, residing within a 
hundred miles of Norfolk Street." 

I felt that we were almost safe now, I felt that the dear 
boy had no suspicion of the bitter truth, and I looked at 
the Major for the first time and drew a long breath. The 
Major gave me a nod. 

“Our hero's father" Jemmy goes on “ proving impla- 
cable and carrying his threat into unrelenting execution, 
the struggles of the young couple in London were severe, 
and would have been far more so, but for their good 
angel's having conducted them to the abode of Mrs. 
Gran ; who, divining their poverty (in spite of their en- 
deavors to conceal it from her), by a thousand delicate 
arts smoothed their rough way, and alleviated the sharp- 
ness of their first distress." 

Here Jemmy took one of my hands in one of his, and 
began a marking the turns of his story by making me 
give a beat from time to time upon his other hand. 

“ After a while, they left the house of Mrs. Gran, and 
pursued their fortunes through a variety of successes and 
failures elsewhere. But in all reverses, whether for good 
or evil, the words of Mr. Edson to the fair young partner 
of his life were ‘ Unchanging Love and Truth will carry 
us through all ! ' " 

My hand trembled in the dear boy's, those words were 
so wofully unlike the fact. 

“Unchanging Love and Truth" says Jemmy over 
again, as if he had a proud kind of a noble pleasure in it, 
“ will carry us through all I Those were his words. 
And so they fought their way, poor but gallant and hap- 
py, until Mrs. Edson gave birth to a child." 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


467 


‘‘ A daughter,” I says. 

No ” says Jemmy, “a son. And the father was so 
proud of it that he could hardly bear it out of his sight. 
But a dark cloud overspread the scene. Mrs. Edson 
sickened, drooped, and died.” 

Ah I Sickened, drooped, and died I ” I says. 

” And so Mr. Edson’s only comfort, only hope on 
earth, and only stimulus to action, was his darling boy. 
As the child grew older, he grew so like his mother that 
he was her living picture. It used to make him wonder 
why his father cried when he kissed him. But unhappily 
he was like his mother in constitution as well as in face, 
and he died too before he had grown out of childhood. 
Then Mr. Edson, who had good abilities, in his forlorn- 
ness and despair threw them all to the winds. He be- 
came apathetic, reckless, lost. Little by little he sank 
down, down, down, down, until at last he almost lived (I 
think) by gaming. And so sickness overtook him in the 
town of Sens in France, and he lay down to die. But 
now that he laid him down when all was done, and 
looked back upon the green Past beyond the time when 
he had covered it with ashes, he thought gratefully of the 
good Mrs. Gran long lost sight of, who had been so kind 
to him and his young wife in the early days of their mar- 
riage, and he left the little that he had as a last Legacy 
to her. And she, being brought to see him, at first no 
more knew him than she would know from seeing the ruin 
of a Greek or Roman Temple, what it used to be before it 
fell ; but at length she remembered him. And then he 
told her, with tears, of his regret for the misspent part of 
his life, and besought her to think as mildly of it as she 
could, because it was the poor fallen Angel of his un- 
changing Love and Constancy after all. And because 
she had her grandson with her, and he fancied that his 
own boy, if he had lived, might have grown to be some- 
thing like him, he asked her to let him touch his forehead 
with his cheek and say certain parting words.” 

Jemmy's voice sank low when it got to that, and tears 
filled my eyes, and filled the Major's. 

'‘You little Conjurer” I says, “how did you ever make 
it all out ? Go in and write it every word down, for it 's 
a wonder.” 


468 


MRS. LIRRIPER’S LEGACY. 


Which Jemmy did, and 1 have repeated it to you my 
dear from his writing. 

Then the Major took my hand and kissed it, and said, 
** Dearest madam all has prospered with us.^^ 

Ah Major I says drying my eyes, “ we need n^t 
have been afraid. We might have known it. Treachery 
don^t come natural to beaming youth ; but trust and pity, 
love and constancy, — they do, thank God 1 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD 


I AH a Cheap Jack, and my own father^s name was 
Willum Marigold. It was in his lifetime supposed by 
some that his name was William, but my own father al- 
ways consistently said, No, it was Willum. On which 
point I content myself with looking at the argument this 
way : If a man is not allowed to know his own name in a 
free country, how much is he allowed to know in a land 
of slavery ? As to looking at the argument through the 
medium of the Register, Willum Marigold come into the 
world before Registers come up much, — and went out of 
it too. They would n^t have been greatly in his line 
neither, if they had chanced to come up before him. 

I was born on the Queen^s highway, but it was the 
King^s at that time. A doctor was fetched to my own 
mother by my own father, when it took place on a com- 
mon ; and in consequence of his being a very kind gen- 
tleman, and accepting no fee but a tea-tray, I was named 
Doctor, out of gratitude and compliment to him. There 
you have me. Doctor Marigold. 

I am at present a middle-aged man of a broadish build, 
in cords, leggings, and a sleeved waistcoat the strings of 
which is always gone behind. Repair them how you 
will, they go like fiddle-strings. You have been to the 
theatre, and you have seen one of the wiolin-players 
screw up his wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been 
whispering the secret to him that it feared it was out of 
order, and then you have heard it snap. That ^s as ex- 
actly similar to my waistcoat as a waistcoat and a wiolin 
can be like one another. 


470 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round 
my neck wore loose and easy. Sitting doA^n is my favor- 
ite posture. If I have a taste in point of personal jew- 
elry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons. There you have me 
again, as large as life. 

The doctor having accepted a tea-tray, you T1 guess 
that my father was a Cheap Jack before me. You are 
right. He was. It was a pretty tray. It represented a 
large lady going along a serpentining up-hill gravel-walk, 
to attend a little church. Two swans had likewise come 
astray with the same intentions. When I call her a large 
lady, I don^t mean in point of breadth, for there she fell 
below my views, but she more than made it up in heighth ; 
her heighth and slimness was — in short the heighth of 
both. 

I often saw that tray, after I was the innocently smil- 
ing cause (or more likely screeching one) of the doctor^s 
standing it up on a table against the wall in his consult- 
ing-room. Whenever my own father and mother were in 
that part of the country, I used to put my head (I have 
heard my own mother say it was flaxen curls at that time, 
though you would n’t know an old hearth-broom from it 
now till you come to the handle and found it was n’t me) 
in at the doctor’s door, and the doctor was always glad 
to see me, and said, ‘‘ Aha, my brother practitioner ! 
Come in, little M. D. How are your inclinations as to 
sixpence ? ” 

You can’t go on forever, you ’ll find, nor yet could my 
father nor yet my mother. If you don’t go off as a whole 
when you are about due, you ’re liable to go off in part, 
and two to one your head ’s the part. Gradually my fa- 
ther went off his, and my mother went off hers. It was 
in a harmless way, but it put out the family where I 
boarded them. The old couple, though retired, got to be 
wholly and solely devoted to the Cheap Jack business, 
and were always selling the family off. Whenever the 
cloth was laid for dinner, my father began rattling the 
plates and dishes, as we do in our line when we put up 
crockery for a bid, only he had lost the trick of it, and 
mostly let ’em drop and broke ’em. As the old lady had 
been used to sit in the cart, and hand the articles out 
one by one to the old gentleman on the footboard to sellj 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


471 


just IQ the same way she handed him every item of the 
family’s property, and they disposed of it in their own 
imaginations from morning to night. At last the old gen- 
tleman, lying bedridden in the same room with the old 
lady, cries out in the old patter, fluent, after having been 
silent for two days and nights : Now here, my jolly 
companions every one, — which the Nightingale club in 
a village was held. At the sign of the Cabbage and 
Shears, Where the singers no doubt would have greatly 
excelled, But for want of taste, voices, and ears, — now, 
here, my jolly companions, every one, is a working model 
of a used-up old Cheap Jack, without a tooth in his head, 
and with a pain in every bone : so like life that it would 
be just as good if it was n’t better, just as bad if it 
was n’t worse, and just as new if it was n’t worn out. 
Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, who 
has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time 
than would blow the lid off* a washerwoman’s copper, and 
carry it as many thousands of miles higher than the moon 
as naught nix naught, divided by the national debt, carry 
nothing to the poor-rates, three under and two over. 
Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you 
say for the lot? Two shillings, a shilling, tenpence, eight- 
pence, sixpence, fourpence. Twopence ? Who said two- 
pence ? The gentleman in the scarecrow’s hat ? I am 
ashamed of the gentleman in the scarecrow’s hat. I 
really am ashamed of him for his want of public spirit. 
Now I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do with you. Come ! I ’ll 
throw you in a working model of a old woman that was 
married to the old Cheap Jack so long ago that upon my 
word and honor it took place in Noah’s Ark, before the 
Unicorn could get in to forbid the banns by blowing a 
tune upon his horn. There now I Come ! What do you 
say for both ? I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do with you. I 
don’t bear you malice for being so backward. Here ! If 
you make me a bid that ’ll only reflect a little credit on 
your town, I ’ll throw you in a warming-pan for nothing, 
and lend you a toasting-fork for life. Now come ; what 
do you say after that splendid offer ? Say two pound, 
say thirty shillings, say a pound, say ten shillings, say 
five, say two and six ? You don’t say even two and six ? 
You say two and three ? No. You sha’ n’t have the lot 


472 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


for two and three. I M sooner give it you, if you was 
good-looking enough. Here I Missis ! Chuck the old 
man and woman into the cart, put the horse to, and drive 
^em away and bury ^em I Such were the last words of 
Willum Marigold, my own father, and they were carried 
out, by him and by his wife, my own mother, on one and 
the same day, as I ought to know, having followed as 
mourner. 

My father had been a lovely one in his time at the 
Cheap Jack work, as his dying observations went to 
prove. But I top him. I don^t say it because it ^s my- 
self, but because it has been universally acknowledged 
by all that has had the means of comparison. I have 
worked at it. I have measured myself against other pub- 
lic speakers, — Members of Parliament, Platforms, Pul- 
pits, Counsel learned in the law, — and where I have 
found ’em good, I have took a bit of imagination from 
’em, and where I have found ’em bad, I have let ’em 
alone. Now I ’ll tell you what. I mean to go down into 
my grave declaring that of all the callings ill used in 
Great Britain, the Cheap Jack calling is the worst used. 
Why ain’t we a profession ? Why ain’t we endowed 
with privileges ? Why are we forced to take out a hawk- 
er’s license, when no such thing is expected of the polit- 
ical hawkers ? Where ’s the difierence betwixt us ? Ex- 
cept that we are Cheap Jacks and they are Dear Jacks, 
I don’t see any difference but what ’s in our favor. 

For look here 1 Say it ’s election time. I am on the 
footboard of my cart in the market-place on a Saturday 
night. I put up a general miscellaneous lot. I say : 

Now here, my free and independent woters, I ’m a going 
to give you such a chance as you never had in all your 
born days, nor yet the days preceding. Now I ’ll show 
you what I am a going to do with you. Here ’s a pair 
of razors that ’ll shave you closer than the Board of Guar- 
dians ; here ’s a flat-iron worth its weight in gold ; here ’s 
a frying-pan artificially flavored with essence of beefsteaks 
to that degree that you ’ve only got for the rest of your 
lives to fry bread and dripping in it and there you are 
replete with animal food ; here ’s a genuine chronometer 
watch in such a solid silver case that you may knock at 
the door with it when you come home late from a social 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


473 


meeting, and rouse your wife and family, and save up 
your knocker for the postman ; and here ^s half a dozen 
dinner plates that you may play the cymbals with to 
charm the baby when it ’s fractious. Stop I I ^11 throw 
you in another article, and I ’ll give you that, and it ’s a 
rolling-pin ; and if the baby can only get it well into its 
mouth when its teeth is coming and rub the gums once 
with it, they ’ll come through double, in a fit of laughter 
equal to being tickled. Stop again I I ’ll throw you in 
another article, because I don’t like the looks of you, for 
you have n’t the appearance of buyers unless I lose by 
you, and because I ’d rather lose than not take money 
to-night, and that ’s a looking-glass in which you may see 
how ugly you look when you don’t bid. What do you 
say now ? Come ! Do you say a pound ? Not you, for 
you have n’t got it. Do you say ten shillings ? Not you, 
for you owe more to the tallyman. Well then, I ’ll tell 
you what I ’ll do with you. I ’ll heap ’em all on the foot- 
board of the cart, — there they are ! razors, flat-iron, fry- 
ing-pan, chronometer watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, 
and looking-glass, — take ’em all away for four shillings, 
and I ’ll give you sixpence for your trouble ! ” This is 
me, the Cheap Jack. But on the Monday morning, in 
the same market-place, comes the Dear Jack on the hust- 
ings — his cart — and what does he say? “Now my 
free and independent woters, I am a going to give you 
such a chance ” (he begins just like me) “as you never 
had in all your born days, and that ’s the chance of send- 
ing Myself to Parliament. Now I ’ll tell you what I am 
a going to do for you. Here ’s the interests of this mag- 
nificent town promoted above all the rest of the civilized 
and uncivilized earth. Here’s your railways carried, and 
your neighbors’ railways jockeyed. Here ’s all your 
sons in the Post-oflSce. Here ’s Britannia smiling on you. 
Here ’s the eyes of Europe on you. Here ’s uniwersal 
prosperity for you, repletion of animal food, golden corn- 
fields, gladsome homesteads, and rounds of applause from 
your own hearts, all in one lot, and that ’s myself. Will 
you take me as I stand? You won’t? Well, then I ’ll 
tell you what I ’ll do with you. Come now ! I ’ll throw 
you in anything you ask for. There I Church-rates, 
abolition of church-rates, more malt tax, no malt tax, uni- 


474 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


wersal education to the highest mark, or uniwersal igno- 
rance to the lowest, total abolition of flogging in the army 
or a dozen for every private once a month all round, 
Wrongs of Men or Rights of Women — only say which 
it shall be, take ^em or leave ^em, and I ’m of your opin- 
ion altogether, and the lot ’s your own on your own terms. 
There I You won^t take it yet! Well, then, 1^11 tell 
you what I T1 do with you. Come ! You are such free and 
independent woters, and I am so proud of you, — you are 
such a noble and enlightened constituency, and I am so 
ambitious of the honor and dignity of being your member, 
which is by far the highest level to which the wings of 
the human mind can soar, — that I T1 tell you what I ^1 
do with you. I fll throw you in all the public-houses in 
your magnificent town for nothing. Will that content 
you? It won^t? You won't take the lot yet? Well, 
then, before I put the horse in and drive away, and make 
the ofler to the next most magnificent town that can be 
discovered, I '11 tell you what I '11 do. Take the lot, and 
I '11 drop two thousand pound in the streets of your mag- 
nificent town for them to pick up that can. Not enough ? 
Now look here. This is the very furthest that I 'm a 
going to. I '11 make it two thousand five hundred. And 
still you won't ? Here, missis ! Put the horse — no, 
stop half a moment, I should n't like to turn my back 
upon you neither for a trifle, I '11 make it two thousand 
seven hundred and fifty pound. There ! Take the lot on 
your own terms, and I '11 count out two thousand seven 
hundred and fifty pound on the footboard of the cart, to 
be dropped in the streets of your magnificent town for 
them to pick up that can. What do you say ? Come 
now I You won't do better, and you may do worse. 
You take it ? Hooray 1 Sold again, and got the seat I " 
These Dear Jacks soap the people shameful, but wo 
Cheap Jacks don't. We tell 'em the truth about them- 
selves to their faces, and scorn to court 'em. As to 
wenturesomeness in the way of puffing up the lots, the 
Dear Jacks beat us hollow. It is considered in the Cheap 
Jack calling, that better patter can be made out of a gun 
than any article we put up from the cart, except a pair 
of spectacles. I often hold forth about a gun for a quar- 
ter of an hour, and feel as if I need never leave off. But 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


475 


when I tell ^em what the gun can do, and what the gun 
has brought down, I never go half so far as the Dear 
Jacks do when they make speeches in praise of their 
guns, — their great guns that set ^em on to do it. Be- 
sides, I in business for myself ; I ain’t sent down into 
the market-place to order, as they are. Besides, again, 
my guns don’t know what I say in their laudation, and 
their guns do, and the whole concern of ’em have reason 
to be sick and ashamed all round. These are some of 
niy arguments for declaring that the Cheap Jack calling 
is treated ill in Great Britain, and for turning warm when 
I think of the other Jacks in question setting themselves 
up to pretend to look down upon it. 

I courted my wife from the footboard of the cart. I 
did indeed. She was a Suifolk young woman, and it was 
in Ipswich market-place right opposite the corn-chandler’s 
shop. I had noticed her up at a window last Saturday 
that was, appreciating highly. I had took to her, and I 
had said to myself, ‘‘If not already disposed of. I’ll 
have that lot.” Next Saturday that come, I pitched the 
cart on the same pitch, and I was in very high feather 
indeed, keeping ’em laughing the whole of the time, and 
getting off the goods briskly. At last I took out of my 
waistcoat-pocket a small lot wrapped in soft paper, and I 
put it this way (looking up at the window where she was). 
“ Now here, my blooming English maidens, is an article, 
the last article of the present evening’s sale, which I 
offer to only you, the lovely Sufiblk Dumplings biling 
over with beauty, and I won’t take a bid of a thousand 
pounds for from any man alive. Now what is it ? Why, 
I ’ll tell you what it is. It ’s made of fine gold, and it ’s 
not broke, though there ’s a hole in the middle of it, and 
it ’s stronger than any fetter that ever was forged, though 
it ’s smaller than any finger in my set of ten. Why ten ? 
Because, when my parents made over my property to me, 
I tell you true, there was twelve sheets, twelve towels, 
twelve table-cloths, twelve knives, twelve forks, twelve 
table-spoons, and twelve teaspoons, but my set of fingers 
was two short of a dozen, and could never since be 
matched. Now what else is it? Come, I’ll tell you. 
It ’s a hoop of solid gold, wrapped in a silver curl-pape: 
that I myself took ofi* the shining locks of the ever beau- 


47n 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


tiful old lady in Threadneedle Street, London City ; I 
would n’t tell you so if I had n’t the paper to show, or 
you might n’t believe it even of me. Now what else is 
it ? It ’s a man-trap and a handcuff, the parish stocks 
and a leg-lock, all in gold and all in one. Now what 
else is it ? It ’s a wedding-ring. Now I ’ll tell you 
what I ’m a going to do with it. I ’m not a going to 
offer this lot for money ; but I mean to give it to the next 
of you beauties that laughs, and I ’ll pay her a visit to- 
morrow morning at exactly half after nine o’clock as the 
chimes go, and I ’ll take her out for a walk to put up the 
banns. She laughed, and got the ring handed up to her. 
When I called in the morning, she says, “ 0 dear I It ’s 
never you, and you never mean it ? ” It ’s ever me,” 
says I, and I am ever yours, and I ever mean it.” So 
we got married, after being put up three times, — which, 
by the by, is quite in the Cheap Jack way again, and 
shows once more how the Cheap Jack customs pervade 
society. 

She was n’t a bad wife, but she had a temper. If she 
could have parted with that one article at a sacrifice, I 
would n’t have swopped her away in exchange for any 
other woman in England. Not that I ever did swop her 
away, for we lived together till she died, and that was 
thirteen year. Now, my lords and ladies and gentlefolks 
all, I ’ll let you into a secret, though you won’t believe 
it. Thirteen year of temper in a Palace would try the 
worst of you, but thirteen year of temper in a Cart would 
try the best of you. You are kept so very close to it in 
a cart, you see. There ’s thousands of couples among 
you getting on like sweet ile upon a whetstone in houses 
five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to the 
Divorce Court in a cart. Whether the jolting makes it 
worse, I don’t undertake to decide ; but in a cart it does 
come home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a cart 
is so wiolent, and aggrawation in a cart is so aggra- 
wating. 

We might have had such a pleasant life I A roomy 
cart, with the large goods hung outside, and the bed 
slung underneath it when on the road, an iron pot and a 
kettle, a fireplace for the cold weather, a chimney for the 
smoke, a hanging shelf and a cupboard, a dog, and a 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD 


477 


horse. What more do you want ? You draw off upon a 
bit of turf in a green lane or by the roadside, you hobble 
your old horse and turn him grazing, you light your fire 
upon the ashes of the last visitors, you cook your stew, 
and you would n’t call the Emperor of France your father. 
But have a temper in the cart, flinging language and the 
hardest goods in stock at you, and where are you then ? 
Put a name to your feelings. 

My dog knew as well when she was on the turn as I 
did. Before she broke out, he would give a howl, and 
bolt. How he knew it, was a mystery to me ; but the 
sure and certain knowledge of it would wake him up out 
of his soundest sleep, and he would give a howl, and 
bolt. At such times I wished I was him. 

The worst of it was, we had a daughter born to us, 
and I love children with all my heart. When she was in 
her furies, she beat the child. This got to be so shock- 
ing, as the child got to be four or five year old, that I 
have many a time gone on with my whip over my shoul- 
der, at the old horse’s head, sobbing and crying worse 
than ever little Sophy did. For how could I prevent it ? 
Such a thing is not to be tried with such a temper — in a 
cart — without coming to a fight. It ’s in the natural size 
and formation of a cart to bring it to a fight. And then 
the poor child got worse terrified than before, as well as 
worse hurt generally, and her mother made complaints to 
the next people we lighted on, and the word went round. 

Here ’s a wretch of a Cheap Jack been a beating his 
wife.” 

Little Sophy was such a brave child I She grew to 
be quite devoted to her poor father, though he could do 
so little to help her. She had a wonderful quantity of 
shining dark hair, all curling natural about her. It is 
quite astonishing to me now, that I did n’t go tearing 
mad when I used to see her run from her mother before 
the cart, and her mother catch her by this hair, and pull 
her down by it, and beat her. 

Such a brave child I said she was I Ah I with reason 

“ Don’t you mind next time, father dear,” she would 
whisper to me, with her little face still flushed, and her 
bright eyes still wet ; “ if I don’t cry out, you may know 
1 am not much hurt. And even if I do cry out, it will 


478 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


only be to get mother to let go and leave off.^^ What x 
have seen the little spirit bear — forme — without cry- 
ing out I 

Yet in other respects her mother took great care of 
her. Her clothes were always clean and neat, and her 
mother was never tired of working at ^em. Such is the 
inconsistency in things. Our being down in the marsh 
country in unhealthy weather, I consider the cause of 
Sophy’s taking bad low fever ; but however she took it, 
once she got it she turned away from her mother forever- 
more, and nothing would persuade her to be touched by 
her mother’s hand. She would shiver and say, No, no, 
no,” when it was offered at, and would hide her face on 
my shoulder, and hold me tighter round the neck. 

The Cheap Jack business had been worse than ever I 
had known it, what with one thing and what with another 
(and not least what with railroads, which will cut it all 
to pieces, I expect, at last), and I was run dry of money. 
For which reason, one night at that period of little So- 
phy’s being so bad, either we must have come to a dead- 
lock for victuals and drink, or I must have pitched the 
cart as I did. 

I could n’t get the dear child to lie down or leave go of 
me, and indeed I had n’t the heart to try, so I stepped 
out on the footboard with her holding round my neck. 
They all set up a laugh when they see us, and one 
chuckle-headed Joskin (that I hated for it) made the bid- 
ding, “ Tuppence for her I ” 

“ Now, you country boobies,” says I, feeling as if my 
heart was a heavy weight at the end of a broken sash- 
line, I give you notice that I am a going to charm the 
money out of your pockets, and to give you so much 
more than your money’s worth that you ’ll only persuade 
yourselves to draw your Saturday night’s wages ever 
again arterwards by the hopes of meeting me to lay ’em 
out with, which you never will, and why not ? Because 
I ’ve made my fortune by selling my goods on a large 
scale for seventy-five per cent less than I give for ’em, 
and I am consequently to be elevated to the House of 
Peers next week, by the title of the Duke of Cheap and 
Markis Jackaloorul. Now let ’s know what you want 
to-night, and you shall have it. But first of all, shall I 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


479 


tell you wliy I have got this little girl round my neck ? 
You don’t want to know ? Then you shall. She belongs 
to the Fairies. She ’s a fortune-teller. She can tell me 
all about you in a whisper, and can put me up to whether 
you’re a going to buy a lot or leave it. Now do you 
want a saw ? No, she says you don’t, because you ’re 
too clumsy to use one. Else here ’s a saw which would 
be a lifelong blessing to a handy man, at four shillings, 
at three and six, at three, at two and six, at two, at eigh- 
teen-pence. But none of you shall have it at any price, 
on account of your well-known awkwardness, which 
would make it manslaughter. The same objection ap- 
plies to this set of three planes which I won’t let 3^ou 
have neither, so don’t bid for ’em. Now I am a going to 
ask her what you do want.” (Then I whispered, Your 
head burns so, that I am afraid it hurts you bad, my 
pet,” and she answered, without opening her heavy eyes. 
Just a little, father.”) Oh I This little fortune-teller 
says it ’s a memorandum-book you want. Then why 
did n’t you mention it ? Here it is. Look at it. Two 
hundred superfine hot-pressed wire-wove pages — if you 
don’t believe me, count ’em — ready ruled for your ex- 
penses, an everlastingly pointed pencil to put ’em down 
with, a double-bladed penknife to scratch ’em out with, a 
book of printed tables to calculate your income with, and 
a camp-stool to sit down upon while you give your mind 
to it I Stop ! And an umbrella to keep the moon off 
when you give your mind to it on a pitch dark night. 
Now I won’t ask you how much for the lot, but how 
little ? How little are you thinking of ? Don’t be 
ashamed to mention it, because my fortune-teller knows 
already.” (Then making believe to whisper, I kissed 
her, and she kissed me.) Why, she says you ’re think- 
ing of as little as three and threepence I I could n’t have 
believed it, even of you, unless she told me. Three and 
threepence I And a set of printed tables in the lot that ’ll 
calculate your income up to forty thousand a year ! With 
an income of forty thousand a year, you grudge three and 
sixpence. Well then. I’ll tell you my opinion. I so 
despise the threepence, that I ’d sooner take three shil- 
lings. There. For three shillings, three shillings, three 
shillings ! Gone. Hand ’em over to the lucky man.” 


480 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


As there had been no bid at all, everybody looked 
about and grinned at everybody, while I touched little 
Sophy’s face, and asked her if she felt faint or giddy. 
“Not very, father. It will soon be over.” Then turn- 
ing from the pretty patient eyes, which were opened now, 
and seeing nothing but grins across my lighted grease- 
pot, I went on again in my Cheap Jack style. “ Where ’s 
the butcher?” (My sorrowful eye had just caught sight 
of a fat young butcher on the outside of the crowd.) 
“ She says the good luck is the butcher’s. Where is 
he ? ” Everybody handed on the blushing butcher to the 
front, and there was a roar, and the butcher felt himself 
obliged to put his hand in his pocket, and take the lot. 
The party so picked out, in general, does feel obliged to 
take the lot, — good four times out of six. Then we had 
another lot, the counterpart of that one, and sold it six- 
pence cheaper, which is always wery much enjoyed. 
Then we had the spectacles. It ain’t a special profitable 
lot, but I put ’em on, and I see what the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer is going to take off the taxes, and I see 
what the sweetheart of the young woman in the shawl is 
doing at home, and I see what the Bishops has got for 
dinner, and a deal more that seldom fails to fetch ’em up 
in their spirits ; and the better their spirits the better 
their bids. Then we had the ladies’ lot, — the teapot, 
tea-caddy, glass sugar-basin, half a dozen spoons, and 
caudle-cup, — and all the time I was making similar ex- 
cuses to give a look or two and say a word or two to my 
poor child. It was while the second ladies’ lot was hold- 
ing ’em enchained that I felt her lift herself a little on my 
shoulder, to look across the dark street. “ What trou- 
bles you, darling ? ” “ Nothing troubles me, father. I 

am not at all troubled. But don’t I see a pretty church- 
yard over there ? ” “Yes, my dear.” “ Kiss me twice, 
dear father, and lay me down to rest upon that church- 
yard grass so soft and green.” I staggered back into 
the cart with her head dropped on my shoulder, and I 
says to her mother, “ Quick. Shut the door I Don’t let 
those laughing people see I ” “ What ’s the matter ? ” 

she cries. “0 woman, woman,” I tells her, “you’ll 
never catch my little Sophy by her hair again, for she has 
flown away from you I ” 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


481 


Maybe those were harder words than I meant ^em ; 
but from that time forth my wife took to brooding, and 
would sit in the cart or walk beside it hours at a stretch, 
with her arms crossed, and her eyes looking on the 
ground. When her furies took her (which was rather 
seldomer than before) they took her in a new way, and 
she banged herself about to that extent that I was forced 
to hold her. She got none the better for a little drink 
now and then, and through some years I used to wonder, 
as I plodded along at the old horse’s head, whether there 
was many carts upon the road that held so much dreari- 
ness as mine, for all my being looked up to as the King 
of the Cheap Jacks. So sad our lives went on till one 
summer evening, when, as we were coming into Exeter 
out of the farther West of England, we saw a woman 
beating a child in a cruel manner, who screamed, Don’t 
beat me ! 0 mother, mother, mother ! ” Then my wife 
stopped her ears, and ran away like a wild thing, and 
next day she was found in the river. 

Me and my dog were all the company left in the cart 
now ; and the dog learned to give a short bark when they 
would n’t bid, and to give another and a nod of his head 
when I asked him, Who said half a crown ? Are you 
the gentleman, sir, that offered half a crown ? ” He at- 
tained to an immense height of popularity, and I shall 
always believe taught himself entirely out of his own 
head to growl at any person in the crowd that bid as low 
as sixpence. But he got to be well on in years, and one 
night when I was conwulsing York with the spectacles, 
he took a conwulsion on his own account upon the very 
footboard by me, and it finished him. 

Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dreadful lonely 
feelings on me arter this. I conquered ’em at selling 
times, having a reputation to keep (not to mention keep- 
ing myself), but they got me down in private, and rolled 
upon me. That ’s often the way with us public charac- 
ters. See us on the footboard, and you ’d give pretty 
well anything you possess to be us. See us off the foot- 
board, and you ’d add a trifle to be off your bargain. It 
was under those circumstances that I come acquainted 
with a giant. I might have been too high to fall into 
conversation with him, had it not been for my lonely 


482 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


feelings. For the general rule is, going round the coun- 
try, to draw the line at dressing up. When a man canH 
trust his getting a living to his undisguised abilities, you 
consider him below your sort. And this giant when on 
view figured as a Eoman. 

He was a languid young man, which I attribute to the 
distance betwixt his extremities. He had a little head 
and less in it, he had weak eyes and weak knees, and 
altogether you could n^t look at him without feeling that 
there was greatly too much of him both for his joints and 
his mind. But he was an amiable though timid young 
man (his mother let him out, and spent the money), and 
we come acquainted when he was walking to ease the 
horse betwixt two fairs. He was called Kinaldo di Ve- 
lasco, his name being Pickleson. 

This giant, otherwise Pickleson, mentioned to me under 
the seal of confidence that, beyond his being a burden to 
himself, his life was made a burden to him by the cruelty 
of his master towards a step-daughter who was deaf and 
dumb. Her mother was dead, and she had no living soul 
to take her part, and was used most hard. She travelled 
with his master’s caravan only because there was nowhere 
to leave her, and this giant, otherwise Pickleson, did go 
so far as to believe that his master often tried to lose her. 
He was such a very languid young man, that I don’t 
know how long it didn’t take him to get this story out, 
but it passed through his defective circulation to his top 
extremity in course of time. 

When I heard this account from the giant, otherwise 
Pickleson, and likewise that the poor girl had beautiful 
long dark hair, and was often pulled down by it and 
beaten, I could n’t see the giant through what stood in 
my eyes. Having wiped ’em, I give him sixpence (for 
he was kept as short as he was long), and he laid it out 
in two threepenn’orths of gin-and-water, which so brisked 
him up, that he sang the Favorite Comic of Shivery 
Shakey, ain’t it cold? — a popular effect which his master 
had tried every other means to get out of him as a Eoman 
wholly in vain. 

His master’s name was Mim, a wery hoarse man, and 
I knew him to speak to. I went to that Fair as a mere 
civilian, leaving the cart outside the town, and I looked 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


483 


about the back of the Vans while the performing was 
going on, and at last, sitting dozing against a muddy 
cart-wheel, I come upon the poor girl who was deaf and 
dumb. At the first look I might almost have judged that 
she had escaped from the Wild Beast Show ; but at the 
second I thought better of her, and thought that if she 
was more cared for and more kindly used she would be 
like my child. She was just the same age that my own 
daughter would have been, if her pretty head had not fell 
down upon my shoulder that unfortunate night. 

To cut it short, I spoke confidential to Mim while he 
was beating the gong outside betwixt two lots of Pickle- 
son^s publics, and I put it to him, “ She lies heavy on 
your own hands ; what ’ll you take for her ? ” Mim was 
a most ferocious swearer. Suppressing that part of his 
reply which was much the longest part, his reply was, 

A pair of braces.” ‘‘ Now I ’ll tell you,” says I, 

what I ’m a going to do with you. I ’m a going to 
fetch you half a dozen pair of the primest braces in the 
cart, and then to take her away with me.” Says Mim 
(again ferocious), I ’ll believe it when I ’ve got the 
goods, and no sooner.” I made all the haste I could, 
lest he should think twice of it, and the bargain was com- 
pleted, which Pickleson he was thereby so relieved in his 
mind that he come out at his little back door, longways 
like a serpent, and give us Shivery Shakey in a whisper 
among the wheels at parting. 

It was happy days for both of us when Sophy and me 
began to travel in the cart. I at once give her the name 
of Sophy, to put her ever towards me in the attitude 
of my own daughter. We soon made out to begin to 
understand one another, through the goodness of the 
Heavens, when she knowed that I meant true and kind 
by her. In a very little time she was wonderful fond of 
me. You have no idea what it is to have anybody won- 
derful fond of you, unless you have been got down and 
rolled upon by the lonely feelings that I have mentioned 
as having once got the better of me. 

You’d have laughed — or the rewerse — it’s accord- 
ing to your disposition — if you could have seen me try- 
ing to teach Sophy. At first I was helped — you ’d never 
guess by what — milestones. I got some large alphabets 


484 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


in a box, all the letters separate on bits of bone, and say 
we was going to Windsor, I give her those letters in 
that order, and then at every milestone I showed her 
those same letters in that same order again, and pointed 
towards the abode of royalty. Another time I give her 
CART, and then chalked the same upon the cart. An- 
other time I give her DOCTOR MARIGOLD, and 
hung a corresponding inscription outside my waistcoat. 
People that met us might stare a bit and laugh, but what 
did I care, if she caught the idea ? She caught it after 
long patience and trouble, and then we did begin to get 
on swimmingly, I believe you I At first she was a little 
given to consider me the cart, and the cart the abode of 
royalty, but that soon wore off. 

We had our signs, too, and they was hundreds in num- 
ber. Sometimes she would sit looking at me and consid- 
ering hard how to communicate with me about something 
fresh, — how to ask me what she wanted explained, — 
and then she was (or I thought she was ; what does it 
signify ?) so like my child with those years added to her, 
that I half believed it was herself, trying to tell me where 
she had been to up in the skies, and what she had seen 
since that unhappy night when she flied away. She had 
a pretty face, and now that there was no one to drag at 
her bright dark hair, and it was all in order, there was a 
something touching in her looks that made the cart most 
peaceful and most quiet, though not at all melancholy. 
[N. B. In the Cheap Jack patter, we generally sound it 
lemonjolly, and it gets a laugh.] 

The way she learnt to understand any look of mine was 
truly surprising. When I sold of a night, she would sit 
in the cart unseen by them outside, and would give a 
eager look into my eyes when I looked in, and would 
hand me straight the precise article or articles I wanted. 
And then she would clap her hands, and laugh for joy. 
And as for me, seeing her so bright, and remembering 
what she was when I first lighted on her, starved and 
beaten and ragged, leaning asleep against the muddy 
cart-wheel, it give me such heart that I gained a greater 
heighth of reputation than ever, and I put Pickleson down 
(by the name of Mim^s Travelling Giant otherwise Pickle- 
son) for a fypunnote in my will. 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


485 


This happiness went on in the cart till she was sixteen 
year old. By which time I began to feel not satisfied 
that I had done my whole duty by her, and to consider 
that she ought to have better teaching than I could give 
her. It drew a many tears on both sides when I com- 
menced explaining my views to her ; but what \s right is 
right, and you can^t neither by tears nor laughter do 
away with its character. 

So I took her hand in mine, and I went with her one 
day to the Deaf and Dumb Establishment in London, and 
when the gentleman come to speak to us, I says to him : 

Now 1 ^11 tell you what I ’ll do with you, sir. I am 
nothing but a Cheap Jack, but of late years I have laid 
by for a rainy day notwithstanding. This is my only 
daughter (adopted), and you can’t produce a deafer nor 
a dumber. Teach her the most that can be taught her in 
the shortest separation that can be named, — state the 
figure for it, — and I am game to put the money down. 
I won’t bate you a single farthing, sir, but I ’ll put down 
the money here and now, and I ’ll thankfully throw you 
in a pound to take it. There ! ” The gentleman smiled, 
and then, ‘‘ Well, well,” says he, “ I must first know 
what she has learned already. How do you communi- 
cate with her ? ” Then I showed him, and she wrote in 
printed writing many names of things and so forth ; and 
we held some sprightly conversation, Sophy and me, about 
a little story in a book which the gentleman showed her, 
and which she was able to read. This is most extraor- 
dinary,” says the gentleman ; ‘‘ is it possible that you 
have been her only teacher? ” I have been her only 
teacher, sir,” I says, ‘‘ besides herself.” ‘‘ Then,” says 
the gentleman, and more acceptable words was never 
spoke to me, ‘‘ you ’re a clever fellow, and a good fellow.” 
This he makes known to Sophy, who kisses his hands, 
claps her own, and laughs and cries upon it. 

We saw the gentleman four times in all, and when he 
took down my name and asked how in the world it ever 
chanced to be Doctor, it come out that he was own nephew 
by the sister’s side, if you ’ll believe me, to the very 
doctor that I was called after. This made our footing 
still easier, and he says to me : — 

'' Now, Marigold, tell me what more do you want your 
adopted daughter to know ? ” 


486 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


I want her, sir, to be cut off from the world as little 
as can be, considering her deprivations, and therefore to 
be able to read whatever is wrote with perfect ease and 
pleasure.’^ 

<< My good fellow, urges the gentleman, opening his 
eyes wide, ‘‘ why, I can^t do that myself! 

I took his joke, and give him a laugh (knowing by ex- 
perience how flat you fall without it), and I mended my 
words accordingly. 

“ What do you mean to do with her afterwards ? 
asks the gentleman, with a sort of a doubtful eye. To 
take her about the country ? 

“ In the cart, sir, but only in the cart. She will live 
a private life, you understand, in the cart. I should 
never think of bringing her infirmities before the public. 
I would n^t make a show of her for any money. 

The gentleman nodded, and seemed to approve. 

“ Well,^^ says he, “ can you part with her for two 
years ? 

“ To do her that good, — yes, sir.^^ 

“ There ’s another question, says the gentleman, look- 
ing towards her, — “ can she part with you for two 
years ? 

I don^t know that it was a harder matter of itself (for 
the other was hard enough to me), but it was harder to 
get over. However, she was pacified to it at last, and 
the separation betwixt us was settled. How it cut up 
both of us when it took place, and when I left her at the 
door in the dark of an evening, I don’t tell. But I know 
this : remembering that night, I shall never pass that 
same establishment without a heartache and a swelling in 
the throat; and I couldn’t put you up the best of lots 
in sight of it with my usual spirit, — no, not even the 
gun, nor the pair of spectacles, — for five hundred 
pound reward from the Secretary of State for the Home 
Department, and throw in the honor of putting my legs 
under his mahogany arterwards. 

Still the loneliness that followed in the cart was not 
the old loneliness, because there was a term put to it, 
however long to look forward to ; and because I could 
think, when I was anyways down, that she belonged to 
me and I belonged to her. Always planning for her 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


487 


coming back, I bought in a few months’ time another 
cart, and what do you think I planned to do with it ? 
I ^11 tell you. I planned to fit it up with shelves and 
books for her reading, and to have a seat in it where I 
could sit and see her read, and think that I had been her 
first teacher. Not hurrying over the job, 1 had the fit- 
tings knocked together in contriving ways under my own 
inspection, and here was her bed in a berth with curtains, 
and there was her reading-table, and here was her writ- 
ing-desk, and elsewhere was her books in rows upon rows, 
picters and no picters, bindings and no bindings, gilt- 
edged and plain, just as I could pick ^em up for her in lots 
up and down the country. North and South and West 
and East, Winds liked best and winds liked least. Here 
and there and gone astray. Over the hills and far away. 
And when I had got together pretty well as many books 
as the cart would neatly hold, a new scheme come into my 
head, which, as it turned out, kept my time and attention 
a good deal employed, and helped me over the two years^ 
stile. 

Without being of an awaricious temper, I like to be 
the owner of things. I should n’t wish, for instance, to 
go partners with yourself in the Cheap Jack gart. It ’s 
not that I mistrust you, but that I ’d rather know it was 
mine. Similarly, very likely you ’d rather know it was 
yours. Well ! A kind of a jealousy began to creep into 
my mind when I reflected that all those books would have 
been read by other people long before they was read by 
her. It seemed to take away from her being the owner 
of ’em like. In this way, the question got into my head : 
Could n’t I have a book new-made express for her, which 
she should be the flrst to read ? 

It pleased me, that thought did ; and as I never was a 
man to let a thought sleep (you must wake up all the 
whole family of thoughts you ’ve got and burn their 
nightcaps, or you won’t do in the Cheap Jack line), I set 
to work at it. Considering that I was in the habit of 
changing so much about the country, and that I should 
have to find out a literary character here to make a deal 
with, and another literary character there to make a deal 
with, as opportunities presented, I hit on the plan that 
this same book should be a general miscellaneous lot,-- 


488 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


like the razors, flat-iron, chronometer watch, dinner plates, 
rolling-pin, and looking-glass, — and should n^t be ofiered 
as a single indiwidual article, like the spectacles or the 
gun. When I had come to that conclusion, I come to 
another, which shall likewise be yours. 

Often had I regretted that she never had heard me on 
the footboard, and that she never could hear me. It ain^t 
that I am vain, but that you don^t like to put your own 
light under a bushel. What ^s the worth of your reputa- 
tion, if you canH convey the reason for it to the person 
you most wish to value it ? Now I ’ll put it to you. Is 
it worth sixpence, fippence, fourpence, threepence, two- 
pence, a penny, a halfpenny, a farthing ? No, it ain’t. 
Not worth a farthing. Very, well then. My conclusion 
was that I would begin her book with some account of 
myself. So that, through reading a specimen or two of 
me on the footboard, she might form an idea of my merits 
there. I was aware that I could n’t do m^^self justice. 
A man can’t write his eye (at least I don’t know how to), 
nor yet can a man write his voice, nor the rate of his 
talk, nor the quickness of his action, nor his general 
spicy way. But he can write his turns of speech, when 
he is a public speaker, — and indeed I have heard that 
he very often does, before he speaks ’em. 

Well 1 Having formed that resolution, then come the 
question of a name. How did I hammer that hot iron 
into shape ? This way. The most difficult explanation 
I had ever had with her was, how I come to be called 
Doctor, and yet was no Doctor. After all, I felt that I 
had failed of getting it correctly into her mind, with my 
utmost pains. But trusting to her improvement in the 
two years, I thought that I might trust to her understand- 
ing it when she should come to read it as put down by 
my own hand. Then I thought I would try a joke with 
her and watch how it took, by which of itself I might 
fully judge of her understanding it. We had first dis- 
covered the mistake we had dropped into, through her 
having asked me to prescribe for her when she had sup- 
posed me to be a Doctor in a medical point of view ; so 
thinks I, ‘‘ Now, if I give this book the name of my 
Prescriptions, and if she catches the idea that my only 
Prescriptions are for her amusement and interest, — to 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD 


489 


make her laugh in a pleasant way, or to make her cry in 
a pleasant way, — it will be a delightful proof to both of 
us that we have got over our difficulty. It fell out to 
absolute perfection. For when she saw the book, as I 
had it got up, — the printed and pressed book, — lying 
on her desk in her cart, and saw the title Doctor Mari- 
gold’s Prescriptions, she looked at me for a moment with 
astonishment, then fluttered the leaves, then broke out a 
laughing in the charmingest way, then felt her pulse and 
shook her head, then turned the pages pretending to read 
them most attentive, then kissed the book to me, and put 
it to her bosom with both her hands. I never was better 
pleased in all my life ! 

But let me not anticipate. (I take that expression out 
of a lot of romances I bought for her. I never opened a 
single one of ’em — and I have opened many — but I 
found the romancer saying “let me not anticipate.” 
Which being so, I wonder why he did anticipate, or who 
asked him to it.) Let me not, I say, anticipate. This 
same book took up all my spare time. It was no play 
to get the other articles together in the general miscella- 
neous lot, but when it come to my own article ! There I 
I could n’t have believed the blotting, nor yet the buckling 
to at it, nor the patience over it. Which again is like 
the footboard. The public have no idea. 

At last it was done, and the tvro years’ time was gone 
after all the other time before it, and where it ’s all gone 
to, who knows? The new cart was finished, — yellow 
outside, relieved with wermilion and brass fittings, — the 
old horse was put in it, a new ’un and a boy being laid 
on for the Cheap Jack cart, — and I cleaned myself up to 
go and fetch her. Bright cold weather it was, cart-chim- 
neys smoking, carts pitched private on a piece of waste 
ground over at Wandsworth where you may see ’em from 
the Sou’ western Kailway when not upon the road. (Look 
out of the right-hand window going down.) 

“ Marigold,” says the gentleman, giving his hand 
hearty, “ I am very glad to see you.” 

“Yet I have my doubts, sir,” says I, “if you can be 
half as glad to see me as I am to see you.” 

“ The time has appeared so long, — has it. Marigold ? ” 

“I won’t say that, sir, considering its real length; 
but — ” 


490 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


** What a start, my good fellow ! 

Ah ! I should think it was I Grown such a woman, so 
pretty, so intelligent, so expressive I I knew then that 
she must be really like my child, or I could never have 
known her, standing quiet by the door. 

‘'You are affected,’^ says the gentleman, in a kindly 
manner. 

“ I feel, sir,^^ says I, “that I am but a rough chap in 
a sleeved waistcoat. 

“ I feel,’^ says the gentleman, “ that it was you who 
raised her from misery and degradation, and brought her 
into communication with her kind. But whj'’ do we con- 
verse alone together, when we can converse so well with 
her ? Address her in your own way.^^ 

“ I am such a rough chap in a sleeved waistcoat, sir,’^ 
says I, “ and she is such a graceful woman, and she 
stands so quiet at the door ! 

“Try if she moves at the old sign,^^ says the gentle- 
man. 

They had got it up together o^ purpose to please me I 
For when I give her the old sign, she rushed to my feet, 
and dropped upon her knees, holding up her hands to me 
with pouring tears of love and joy ; and when I took her 
hands and lifted her, she clasped me round the neck, and 
lay there ; and I don’t know what a fool I did n’t make 
of myself, until we all three settled down into talking 
without sound, as if there was a something soft and pleas- 
ant spread over the whole world for us. 

So every item of my plan was crowned with success. 
Our reunited life was more than all that we had looked 
forward to. Content and joy went with us as the wheels 
of the two carts went round, and the same stopped with 
us when the two carts stopped. I was as pleased and as 
proud as a Pug-Dog with his muzzle black-leaded for a 
evening party, and his tail extra curled by machinery. 

But I had left something out of my calculations. Now, 
what had I left out ? To help you to a guess, I ’ll say, a 
figure. Come. Make a guess, and guess right. Naught ? 
No. Nine ? No. Eight ? No. Seven ? No. Six ? 

No. Five ? No. Four ? No. Three ? No. Two ? 

No. One ? No. Now I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do with 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


491 


you. I ^11 say it another sort of figure altogether. 
There. Why then, says you, it ^s a mortal figure. No 
nor yet a mortal figure. By such means you get your- 
self penned into a corn^, and you can^t help guessing a 
immortal figure. That ^s about it. Why did n^t you say 
so sooner ? 

Yes. It was a immortal figure that I had altogether 
left out of my calculations. Neither man^s nor woman^s, 
but a child^s. GirPs, or boy^s ? Boy’s. I, says the 
sparrow, with my bow and arrow.” Now you have got 
it. 

We were down at Lancaster, and I had done two 
nights more than fair average business (though I cannot 
in honor recommend them as a quick audience) in the 
open square there, near the end of the street where Mr. 
Sly’s King’s Arms and Royal Hotel stands. Mim’s trav- 
elling giant, otherwise Pickleson, happened at the self- 
same time to be a trying it on in the town. The genteel 
lay was adopted with him. No hint of a van. Green 
baize alcove leading up to Pickleson in a Auction Room. 
Printed poster, “ Free list suspended, with the exception 
of that proud boast of an enlightened country, a free 
press. Schools admitted by private arrangement. Noth- 
ing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the 
most fastidious.” Mim swearing most horrible and ter- 
rific, in a pink calico pay-place, at the slackness of the 
public. Serious handbill in the shops, importing that it 
was all but impossible to come to a right understanding 
of the history of David without seeing Pickleson. 

I went to the Auction Room in question, and I found 
it entirely empty of everything but echoes and mouldi- 
ness, with the single exception of Pickleson on a piece of 
red drugget. This suited my purpose, as I wanted a 
private and confidential word with him, which was : 
“ Pickleson. Owing much happiness to you, I put you 
in my will for a fypunnote ; but, to save trouble, here ’s 
fourpunten down, which may equally suit your views, 
and let us so conclude the transaction.” Pickleson, who 
up to that remark had had the dejected appearance of a 
long Roman rushlight that could n’t anyhow get lighted, 
brightened up at his top extremity, and made his acknowh 
edgments in a way which (for him) was parliamentary 


492 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


eloquence. He likewise did add, that, having ceased to 
draw as a Roman, Mim had made proposals for his going 
in as a conwerted Indian Giant worked upon by The 
Dairyman’s Daughter. This, Pfckleson, having no ac- 
quaintance with the tract named after that young woman, 
and not being willing to couple gag with his serious 
wiews, had declined to do, thereby leading to words and 
the total stoppage of the unfortunate young man’s beer. 
All of which, during the whole of the interview, was con- 
firmed by the ferocious growling of Mim down below in 
the pay-place, which shook the giant like a leaf. 

But what was to the present point in the remarks of 
the travelling giant, otherwise Pickleson, was this : “ Doc- 
tor Marigold,” — I give his words without a hope of con- 
weying their feebleness, — ‘‘who is the strange young man 
that hangs about your carts ? ” — “ The strange young 
man?” I gives him back, thinking that he meant her, 
and his languid circulation had dropped a syllable. 
“ Doctor,” he returns, with a pathos calculated to draw a 
tear from even a manly eye, “ I am weak, but not so 
weak yet as that I don’t know my words. I repeat them. 
Doctor. The strange young man.” It then appeared 
that Pickleson, being forced to stretch his legs (not that 
they wanted it) only at times when he could n’t be seen 
for nothing, to wit in the dead of the night and towards 
daybreak, had twice seen hanging about my carts, in 
that same town of Lancaster where I had been only two 
nights, this same unknown young man. 

It put me rather out of sorts. What it meant as to 
particulars I no more foreboded then than you forebode 
now, but it put me rather out of sorts. Howsoever, I 
made light of it to Pickleson, and 1 took leave of Pickle- 
son, advising him to spend his legacy in getting up his 
stamina, and to continue to stand by his religion. Tow- 
ards morning I kept a lookout for the strange young man, 
and — what was more — I saw the strange young man. 
He was well dressed and well looking. He loitered very 
nigh my carts, watching them like as if he was taking 
care of them, and soon after daybreak turned and went 
away. I sent a hail after him, but he never started or 
looked round, or took the smallest notice. 

We left Lancaster within an hour or two, on our way 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


493 


towards Carlisle. Next morning, at daybreak, I looked 
out again for the strange young man. I did not see him. 
But next morning I looked out again, and there he was 
once more. I sent another hail after him, but as before 
he gave not the slightest sign of being anyways disturbed. 
This put a thought into my head. Acting on it, I watched 
him in different manners and at different times not neces- 
sary to enter into, till I found that this strange young 
man was deaf and dumb. 

The discovery turned me over, because I knew that a 
part of that establishment where she had been was allot- 
ted to young men (some of them well off), and I thought 
to myself, ‘‘ If she favors him, where am I ? and where is 
all that I have worked and planned for ? Hoping — I 
must confess to the selfishness — that she might not favor 
him, I set myself to find out. At last I was by accident 
present at a meeting between them in the open air, look- 
ing on leaning behind a fir-tree without their knowing of 
it. It was a moving meeting for all the three parties con- 
cerned. I knew every syllable that passed between them 
as well as they did. I listened with my eyes, which had 
come to be as quick and true with deaf and dumb conver- 
sation as my ears with the talk of people that can speak. 
He was a going out to China as clerk in a merchant’s 
house, which his father had been before him. He was in 
circumstances to keep a wife, and he wanted her to marry 
him, and go along with him. She persisted, no. He 
asked if she did n’t love him. Yes, she loved him dearly, 
dearly ; but she could never disappoint her beloved, 
good, noble, generous, and I-don’t-know-what-all father 
(meaning me, the Cheap Jack in the sleeved waistcoat), 
and she would stay with him. Heaven bless him ! though 
it was to break her heart. Then she cried most bitterly, 
and that made up my mind. 

While my mind liad been in an unsettled state about 
her favoring this young man, I had felt that unreasonable 
towards Pickleson, that it was well for him he had got 
his legacy down. For I often thought, If it had n’t 
been for this same weak-minded giant, I might never have 
come to trouble my head and wex my soul about the 
young man.” But, once that I knew she loved him, — 
once that I had seen her weep for him, — it was a difier- 


494 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


ent thing. I made it right in my mind with Pickleson on 
the spot, and I shook myself together to do what was 
right by all. 

She had left the young man by that time (for it took a 
few minutes to get me thoroughly well shook together), 
and the young man was leaning against another of the 
fir-trees, — of which there was a cluster, — with his face 
upon his arm. I touched him on the back. Looking up 
and seeing me, he says, in our deaf and dumb talk, Do 
not be angry. 

“ I am not angry, good boy. I am your friend. Come 
with me.’^ 

I left him at the foot of the steps of the Library Cart, 
and I went up alone. She was drying her eyes. 

You have been crying, my dear.^^ 

Yes, father.^^ 

Why ? 

A headache. 

Not a heartache ? 

I said a headache, father.^’ 

Doctor Marigold must prescribe for that headache. 

She took up the book of my Prescriptions, and held it 
up with a forced smile ; but seeing me keep still and look 
earnest, she softly laid it down again, and her eyes were 
very attentive. 

The Prescription is not there, Sophy.'' 

“ Where is it ? " 

“ Here, my dear." 

I brought her young husband in, and I put her hand in 
his, and my only further words to both of them were 
these : Doctc^r Marigold's last prescription. To be 

taken for life." After which I bolted. 

When the wedding come off, I mounted a coat (blue, 
and bright buttons), for the first and last time in all my 
days, and I give Sophy away with my own hand. There 
were only us three and the gentleman who had had 
charge of her for those two years. I give the wedding 
dinner of four in the Library Cart. Pigeon pie, a leg of 
pickled pork, a pair of fowls, and suitable garden stuff. 
The best of drinks. I give them a speech, and the gen- 
tleman give us a speech, and all our jokes told, and the 
whole went off like a sky-rocket. In the course of the 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


495 


entertainment I explained to Sophy that I should keep 
the Library Cart as my living-cart when not upon the 
road, and that I should keep all her books for her just as 
they stood, till she come back to claim them. So she 
went to China with her young husband, and it was a 
parting sorrowful and heavy, and I got the boy I had 
another service ; and so as of old, when my child and 
wife were gone, 1 went plodding along alone, with my 
whip over my shoulder, at the old horse’s head. 

Sophy wrote me many letters, and I wrote her many 
letters. About the end of the first year she sent me one 
in an unsteady hand : Dearest father, not a week ago I 
had a darling little daughter, but I am so well that they 
let me write these words to you. Dearest and best father, 
I hope my child may not be deaf and dumb, but I do not 
yet know.” When I wrote back, I hinted the question ; 
but as Sophy never answered that question, I felt it to 
be a sad one, and I never repeated it. For a long time 
our letters were regular, but then they got irregular, 
through Sophy’s husband being moved to another station, 
and through my being always on the move. But we 
were in one another’s thoughts, I was equally sure, let- 
ters or no letters. 

Five years, odd months, had gone since Sophy went 
away. I was still the King of the Cheap Jacks, and at a 
greater heighth of popularity than ever. I had had a first- 
rate autumn of it, and on the twenty-third of December, 
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, I found my- 
self at Uxbridge, Middlesex, clean sold out. So I jogged 
up to London with the old horse, light and easy, to have 
my Christmas eve and Christmas day alone by the fire in 
the Library Cart, and then to buy a regular new stock of 
goods all round, to sell ’em again and get the money. 

] am a neat hand at cookery, and I ’ll tell you what I 
knocked up for my Christmas-eve dinner in the Library 
Cart. I knocked up a beefsteak pudding for one, with 
two kidnej^s, a dozen oysters, and a couple of mush- 
rooms, thrown in. It ’s a pudding to put a man in good 
humor with everything except the two bottom buttons 
of his waistcoat. Having relished that pudding and 
cleared away, I turned the lamp low, and sat down by 
the light of the fire, watching it as it shone upon the 
backs of Sophy’s books. 


496 


DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 


Sophy^s books so brought up Sophy^s self, that 1 saw 
her touching face quite plainly, before I dropped off doz- 
ing by the fire. This may be a reason why Sophy, with 
her deaf and dumb child in her arms, seemed to stand 
silent by me all through my nap. I was on the road, off 
the road, in all sorts of places, North and South and 
West and East, Winds liked best and winds liked least, 
Here and there and gone astray. Over the hills and far 
away, and still she stood silent by me, with her silent child 
in her arms. Even when I woke with a start, she seemed 
to vanish, as if she had stood by me in that very place 
only a single instant before. 

I had started at a real sound, and the sound was on 
the steps of the cart. It was the light hurried tread of a 
child, coming clambering up. That tread of a child had 
once been so familiar to me that for half a moment I be- 
lieved I was a going to see a little ghost. 

But the touch of a real child was laid upon the outer 
handle of the door, and the handle turned, and the door 
opened a little way, and a real child peeped in. A 
bright little comely girl with large dark eyes. 

Looking full at me, the tiny creature took off her mite 
of a straw hat, and a quantity of dark curls fell all about 
her face. Then she opened her lips, and said in a pretty 
voice : — 

“ Grandfather ! 

Ah, my God I I cries out. She can speak I 
“Yes, dear grandfather. And I am to ask you whether 
there was ever any one that I remind you of? 

In a moment Sophy was round my neck, as well as 
the child, and her husband was a wringing my hand with 
his face hid, and we all had to shake ourselves together 
before we could get over it. And when we did begin to 
get over it, and I saw the pretty child a talking, pleased 
and quick and eager and busy, to her mother, in the 
signs that I had first taught her mother, the happy and 
yet pitying tears fell rolling down my face. 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


I. 


THE TRIAL FOR MURDER. 

I HAVE always noticed a prevalent want of courage, 
even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, 
as to imparting their own psychological experiences when 
those have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are 
afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find 
no parallel or response in a listener’s internal life, and 
might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller, 
who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the 
likeness of a sea-serpent, would have no fear of mention- 
ing it ; but the same traveller, having had some singular 
presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so 
called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, 
would hesitate considerably before he would own to it. 
To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in 
which such subjects are involved. We do not habitually 
communicate our experiences of these subjective things 
as we do our experiences of objective creation. The con- 
sequence is, that the general stock of experience in this 
regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect 
of being miserably imperfect. 

In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of 
setting up, opposing, or supporting any theory whatever. 
I know the history of the Bookseller of Berlin, I have 
studied the case of the wife of a late Astronomer Koyal 
as related by Sir David Brewster, and I have followed 
the minutest details of a much more remarkable case of 
Spectral Illusion occurring within my private circle of 
friends. It may be necessary to state as to this last, that 
the sufferer (a lady) was in no degree, however distant, 


498 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


related to me. A mistaken assumption on that head 
might suggest an explanation of a part of my own case, 

— but only a part, — which would be wholly without 
foundation. It cannot be referred to my inheritance of 
any developed peculiarity, nor had I ever before any at all 
similar experience, nor have I ever had anv at all similar 
experience since. 

It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, 
a certain murder was committed in England, which at- 
tracted great attention. We hear more than enough of 
murderers as they rise in succession to their atrocious 
eminence, and I would bury the memory of this particu- 
lar brute, if I could, as his body was buried, in Newgate 
Jail. I purposely abstain from giving any direct clew 
to the criminaPs individuality. 

When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion 
fell — or I ought rather to say, for I cannot be too pre- 
cise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any 
suspicion fell — on the man who was afterwards brought 
to trial. As no reference was at that time made to him 
in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any 
description of him can at that time have been given in 
the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remem- 
bered. 

Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing 
the account of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply 
interesting, and, I read it with close attention. I read it 
twice, if not three times. The discovery had been made 
in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was 
aware of a flash — rush — flow — I do not know what to 
call it, — no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive, 

— in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through 
my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running 
river. Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it 
was perfectly clear ; so clear that I distinctly, and with 
a sense of relief, observed the absence of the dead body 
from the bed. 

It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sen- 
sation, but in chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the 
corner of Saint Jameses Street. It was entirely new to 
me. I was in my easy-chair at the moment, and the sen- 
sation was accompanied with a peculiar shiver which 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


499 


started the chair from its position. (But it is to be noted 
that the chair ran easily on castors.) I went to one of 
the windows (there are two in the room, and the room is 
on the second floor) to refresh my eyes with the moving 
objects down in Piccadilly. It was a bright autumn 
morning, and the street was sparkling and cheerful. The 
wind was high. As I looked out, it brought down from 
the Park a quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust took, 
and whirled into a spiral pillar. As the pillar fell and 
the leaves dispersed, I saw two men on the opposite side 
of the way, going from West to East. They were one 
behind the other. The foremost man often looked back 
over his shoulder. The second man followed him, at a 
distance of some thirty paces, with his right hand men- 
acingly raised. First, the singularity and steadiness of 
this threatening gesture in so public a thoroughfare at- 
tracted my attention ; and next, the more remarkable cir- 
cumstance that nobody heeded it. Both men threaded 
their way among the other passengers with a smoothness 
hardly consistent even with the action of walking on a 
pavement ; and no single creature, that I could see, gave 
them place, touched them, or looked after them. In 
passing before my windows, they both stared up at me. 
I saw their two faces very distinctly, and I knew that I 
could recognize them anywhere. Not that I had con- 
sciously noticed anything very remarkable in either face, 
except that the man who went first had an unusually low- 
ering appearance, and that the face of the man who fol- 
lowed him was of the color of impure wax. 

I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute 
my whole establishment. My occupation is in a certain 
Branch Bank, and I wish that my duties as head of a 
Department were as light as they are popularly supposed 
to be. They kept me in town that autumn, when I stood 
in need of change. I was not ill, but I was not well. 
My reader is to make the most that can be reasonably 
made of my feeling jaded, having a depressing sense 
upon me of a monotonous life, and being ‘‘ slightly dys- 
peptic.^^ I am assured by my renowned doctor that my 
real state of health at that time justifies no stronger de- 
scription, and I quote his own from his written answer to 
my request for it. 


600 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


As the circumstances of the murder, gradually unravel- 
ling, took stronger and stronger possession of the public 
mind, I kept them away from mine, by knowing as little 
about them as was possible in the midst of the universal 
excitement. But I knew that a verdict of Wilful Murder 
had been found against the suspected murderer, and that 
he had been committed to Newgate for trial. I also knew 
that his trial had been postponed over one Sessions of the 
Central Criminal Court, on the ground of general prejudice 
and want of time for the preparation of the defence. I 
may further have known, but I believe I did not, when, 
or about when, the Sessions to which his trial stood post- 
poned would come on. 

My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room are all 
on one floor. With the last there is no communication 
but through the bedroom. True, there is a door in it, 
once communicating with the staircase ; but a part of the 
fitting of my bath has been — and had then been for some 
years — fixed across it. At the same period, and as a 
part of the same arrangement, the door had been nailed 
up and canvassed over. 

I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving 
some directions to my servant before he went to bed. 
My face was towards the only available door of commu- 
nication with the dressing-room, and it was closed. My 
servant’s back was towards that door. While I was 
speaking to him, I saw it open, and a man look in, who 
very earnestly and mysteriously beckoned to me. That 
man was the man who had gone second of the two along 
Piccadilly, and whose face was of the color of impure 
wax. 

The figure, having beckoned, drew back, and closed 
the door. With no longer pause than was made by my 
crossing the bedroom, I opened the dressing-room door, 
and looked in. I had a lighted candle already in my 
hand. I felt no inward expectation of seeing the figure 
in the dressing-room, and I did not see it there. 

Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round 
to him, and said : ‘‘ Derrick, could you believe that in 
my cool senses I fancied I saw a — ” As I there laid 
my hand upon his breast, with a sudden start he trembled 
violently, and said, ‘‘ 0 Lord, yes, sir I A dead man 
beckoning ! ” 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


501 


Now I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty 
and attached servant for more than twenty years, had 
any impression whatever of having seen any such figure, 
until I touched him. The change in him was so startling, ) 
when I touched him, that I fully believe he derived his 
impression in some occult manner from me at that in- 
stant. 

I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave 
him a dram, and was glad to take one myself. Of what 
had preceded that night^s phenomenon, I told him not a 
single word. Reflecting on it, I was absolutely certain 
that I had never seen that face before, except on the one 
occasion in Piccadilly. Comparing its expression when 
beckoning at the door with its expression when it had 
stared up at me as I stood at my window, I came to the 
conclusion that on the first occasion it had sought to 
fasten itself upon my memory, and that on the second 
occasion it had made sure of being immediately remem- 
bered. 

I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a 
certainty, difficult to explain, that the figure would not 
return. At daylight I fell into a heavy sleep, from which 
I was awakened by John Derrick^s coming to my bedside 
with a paper in his hand. 

This paper, it appeared, had been the subject of an al- 
tercation at the door between its bearer and my servant. 

It was a summons to me to serve upon a Jury at the 
forthcoming Sessions of the Central Criminal Court at the 
Old Bailey. I had never before been summoned on such 
a Jury, as John Derrick well knew. He believed — I am 
not certain at this hour whether with reason or otherwise 
— that that class of Jurors were customarily chosen on a 
lower qualification than mine, and he had at first refused 
to accept the summons. The man who served it had 
taken the matter very coolly. He had said that my at- 
tendance or non-attendance was nothing to him ; there 
the summons was ; and I should deal with it at my own 
peril, and not at his. 

For a day or two I was undecided whether to respond 
to this call, or take no notice of it. 1 was not conscious 
of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, 
one way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as of 


502 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I 
decided, as a break in the monotony of my life, that I 
would go. 

The appointed morning was a raw morning in the 
month of November. There was a dense brown fog in 
Piccadilly, and it became positively black and in the last 
degree oppressive East of Temple Bar. I found the pas- 
sages and staircases of the Court-House daringly lighted 
with gas, and the Court itself similarly illuminated. I 
think that, until I was conducted by officers into the Old 
Court and saw its crowded state, I did not know that the 
Murderer was to be tried that day. I think that, until I 
was so helped into the Old Court with considerable dif- 
ficulty, I did not know into which of the two Courts sit- 
ting my summons would take me. But this must not be 
received as a positive assertion, for I am not completely 
satisfied in my mind on either point. 

I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in 
waiting, and I looked about the Court as well as I could 
through the cloud of fog and breath that was heavy in it. 
I noticed the black vapor hanging like a murky curtain 
outside the great windows, and I noticed the stified sound 
of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in the 
street ; also, the hum of the people gathered there, which 
a shrill whistle, or a louder song or hail than the rest, 
occasionally pierced. Soon afterwards the Judges, two 
in number, entered, and took their seats. The buzz in 
the Court was awfully hushed. The direction was given 
to put the Murderer to the bar. He appeared there. 
And in that same instant I recognized in him the first of 
the two men who had gone down Piccadilly. 

If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could 
have answered to it audibly. But it was called about 
sixth or eighth in the panel, and I was by that time able 
to say, Here I Now, observe. As I stepped into 
the box, the prisoner, who had been looking on attentive- 
ly, but with no sign of concern, became violently agi- 
tated, and beckoned to his attorney. The prisoner’s wish 
to challenge me was so manifest, that it occasioned a 
pause, during which the attorney, with his hand upon 
the dock, whispered with his client, and shook his head. 
I afterwards had it from that gentleman, that the pris- 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


503 


oner^s first affrighted words to him were. At all haz- 
ards, challenge that man I But that, as he would give 
no reason for it, and admitted that he had not even known 
my name until he heard it called and I appeared, it was 
not done. 

Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to 
avoid reviving the unwholesome memory of that Mur- 
derer, and also because a detailed account of his long 
trial is by no means indispensable to my narrative, I shall 
confine myself closely to such incidents in the ten days 
and nights during which we, the Jury, were kept to- 
gether, as directly bear on my own curious personal ex- 
perience. It is in that, and not in the Murderer, that I 
seek to interest my reader. It is to that, and not to a 
page of the Newgate Calendar, that I beg attention. 

I was chosen Foreman of the Jury. On the second 
morning of the trial, after evidence had been taken for 
two hours (I heard the church clocks strike), happening 
to cast my eyes over my brother jurymen, I found an 
inexplicable difficulty in counting them. I counted them 
several times, yet always with the same difficulty. In 
short, I made them one too many. 

I touched the brother juryman whose place was next 
me, and I whispered to him, Oblige me by counting 
us.^^ He looked surprised by the request, but turned 
his head and counted. Why,^^ says he, suddenly, ‘‘we 
are Thirt — ; but no, it’s not possible. No. We are 
twelve.” 

According to my counting that day, we were always 
right in detail, but in the gross we were always one too 
many. There was no appearance — no figure — to ac- 
count for it ; but I had now an inward foreshadowing of 
the figure that was surely coming. 

The Jury were housed at the London Tavern. We all 
slept in one large room on separate tables, and we were 
constantly in the charge and under the eye of the officer 
sworn to hold us in safe-keeping. I see no reason for 
suppressing the real name of that officer. He was intel- 
ligent, highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to 
hear) much respected in the City. He had an agreeable 
presence, good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine 
sonorous voice. His name was Mr. Harker. 


504 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr. 
Harker^s bed was drawn across the door. On the night 
of the second day, not being disposed to lie down, and 
seeing Mr. Harker sitting on his bed, I went and sat 
beside him, and offered him a pinch of snuff. As Mr. 
Harker’s hand touched mine in taking it from my box, a 
peculiar shiver crossed him, and he said : Who is 

this ! ” 

Following Mr. HarkeFs eyes, and looking along the 
room, I saw again the figure I expected, — the second 
of the two men who had gone down Piccadilly. I rose, 
and advanced a few steps ; then stopped, and looked 
round at Mr. Harker. He was quite unconcerned, 
laughed, and said in a pleasant way, I thought for a 
moment we had a thirteenth juryman, without a bed. 
But I see it is the moonlight. 

Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting him 
to take a walk with me to the end of the room, I watched 
what the figure did. It stood for a few moments by the 
bedside of each of my eleven brother jurymen, close to 
the pillow. It always went to the right-hand side of the 
bed, and always passed out crossing the foot of the next 
bed. It seemed, from the action of the head, merely to 
look down pensively at each recumbent figure. It took 
no notice of me, or of my bed, which was that nearest to 
Mr. Harker’s. It seemed to go out where the moonlight 
came in, through a high window, as by an aerial flight of 
stairs. 

Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody 
present had dreamed of the murdered man last night, ex- 
cept myself and Mr. Harker. 

I now felt as convinced that the second man who had 
gone down Piccadilly was the murdered man (so to 
speak), as if it had been borne into my comprehension 
by his immediate testimony. But even this took place, 
and in a manner for which I was not at all prepared. 

On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the 
prosecution was drawing to a close, a miniature of the 
murdered man, missing from his bedroom upon the dis- 
cover}" of the deed, and afterwards found in a hiding-place 
where the Murderer had been seen digging, was put in 
evidence. Having been identified by the witness under 


TWO GHOST STOUIES. 


505 


examination, it was handed up to the Bench, and thence 
handed down to be inspected by the Jury. As an officer 
in a black gown was making his way with it across to 
me, the figure of the second man who had gone down 
Piccadilly impetuously started from the crowd, caught the 
miniature from the officer, and gave it to me with its own 
hands, at the same time saying, in a low and hollow tone, 
— before I saw the miniature, which was in a locket, — 

I was younger then, and my face was not then drained of 
hlood.” It also came between me and the brother jury- 
man to whom I would have given the miniature, and be- 
tween him and the brother juryman to whom he would 
have given it, and so passed it on through the whole of 
our number, and back into my possession. Not one of 
them, however, detected this. 

At table, and generally when we were shut up together 
in Mr. Ilarker’s custody, we had from the first naturally 
discussed the day’s proceedings a good deal. On that 
fifth day, the case for the prosecution being closed, and 
we having that side of the question in a completed shape 
before us, our discussion was more animated and serious. 
Among our number was a vestryman, — the densest idiot 
I have ever seen at large, — who met the plainest evi- 
dence with the most preposterous objections, and who 
was sided with by two flabby parochial parasites ; all the 
three impanelled from a district so delivered over to Fever 
that they ought to have been upon their own trial for five 
hundred Murders. When these mischievous blockheads 
were at their loudest, which was towards midnight, while 
some of us were already preparing for bed, I again saw 
the murdered man. He stood grimly behind them, beck- 
oning to me. On my going towards them, and striking 
into the conversation, he immediately retired. This was 
the beginning of a separate series of appearances, con- 
fined to that long room in which we were confined. 
Whenever a knot of my brother jurymen laid their heads 
together, I saw the head of the murdered man among 
theirs. Whenever their comparison of notes was going 
against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon 
to me. 

It will be borne in mind that down to the production 
of the miniature, on the fifth day of the trial, I had never 


506 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


seen the Appearance in Court. Three changes occurred 
now that we entered on the case for the defence. Two 
of them I will mention together, first. The figure was 
now in Court continually, and it never there addressed 
itself to me, but always to the person who was speaking 
at the time. For instance. The throat of the murdered 
man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech 
for the defence, it was suggested that the deceased might 
have cut his own throat. At that very moment, the fig- 
ure, with its throat in the dreadful condition referred to 
(this it had concealed before), stood at the speaker’s 
elbow, motioning across and across its windpipe, now 
with the right hand, now with the left, vigorously sug- 
gesting to the speaker himself the impossibility of such a 
wound having been self-inflicted by either hand. For 
another instance. A witness to character, a woman, 
deposed to the prisoner’s being the most amiable of man- 
kind. The figure at that instant stood on the floor before 
her, looking her full in the face, and pointing out the 
prisoner’s evil countenance with an extended arm and an 
outstretched finger. 

The third change now to be added impressed me 
strongly as the most marked and striking of all. I do 
not theorize upon it ; I accurately state it, and there 
leave it. Although the Appearance was not itself per- 
ceived by those whom it addressed, its coming close to 
such persons was invariably attended by some trepida- 
tion or disturbance on their part. It seemed to me as 
if it were prevented, by laws to which I was not amena- 
ble, from fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it 
could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly overshadow their 
minds. When the leading counsel for the defence sug- 
gested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at 
the learned gentleman’s elbow, frightfully sawing at its 
severed throat, it is undeniable that the counsel faltered * 
in his speech, lost for a few seconds the thread of his 
ingenious discourse, wiped his forehead with his handker- 
chief, and turned extremely pale. When the witness to 
character was confronted by the Appearance, her eyes 
most certainly did follow the direction of its pointed fin- 
ger, and rest in great hesitation and trouble upon the 
prisoner’s face. Two additional illustrations will suffice. 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


507 


On the eighth day of the trial, after the pause which was 
every day made early in the afternoon for a few minutes^ 
rest and refreshment, I came back into Court with the 
rest of the Jury, some little time before the return of the 
Judges. Standing up in- the box and looking about me, 
I thought the figure was not there, until, chancing to 
raise my eyes to the gallery, I saw it bending forward, 
and leaning- over a very decent woman, as if to assure 
itself whether the Judges had resumed their seats or not. 
Immediately afterwards that woman screamed, fainted, 
and was carried out. So with the venerable, sagacious, 
and patient Judge who conducted the trial. When the 
case was over, and he settled himself and his papers to 
sum up, the murdered man, entering by the Judges’ door, 
advanced to his Lordship’s desk, and looked eagerly over 
his shoulder at the pages of his notes which he was turn- 
ing. A change came over his Lordship’s face ; his hand 
stopped ; the peculiar shiver, that I knew so well, passed 
over him ; he faltered, “ Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few 
moments. I am somewhat oppressed by the vitiated 
air ” ; and did not recover until he had drunk a glass of 
water. 

Through all the monotony of six of those interminable 
ten days, — the same Judges and others on the bench, 
the same Murderer in the dock, the same lawyers at the 
table, the same tones of question and answer rising to the 
roof of the court, the same scratching of the Judge’s pen, 
the same ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled 
at the same hour when there had been any natural light 
of day, the same foggy curtain outside the great windows 
when it was foggy, the same rain pattering and dripping 
when it was rainy, the same footmarks of turnkeys and 
prisoner day after day on the same sawdust, the same 
keys locking and unlocking the same heavy doors, — 
through all the wearisome monotony which made me feel 
as if I had been Foreman of the Jury for a vast period of 
time, and Piccadilly had fiourished coevally with Babylon, 
the murdered man never lost one trace of his distinctness 
in my eyes, nor was he at any moment less distinct than 
anybody else. I must not omit, as a matter of fact, that 
I never once saw the Appearance which I call by the 
name of the murdered man look at the Murderer. Again 


508 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


and again I wondered, “ Why does he not ? But he 
never did. 

Nor did he look at me, after the production of the min- 
iature, until the last closing minutes of the trial arrived. 
We retired to consider, at seven minutes before ten at 
night. The idiotic vestryman and his two parochial para- 
sites gave us so much trouble that we twice returned into 
Court to beg to have certain extracts from the Judge's 
notes re-read. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt 
about those passages, neither, I believe, had any one in 
Court ; the dunder-headed triumvirate, however, having 
no idea but obstruction, disputed them for that very rea- 
son. At length we prevailed, and finally the Jury re- 
turned into Court at ten minutes past twelve. 

The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite 
the Jury-box, on the other side of the Court. As I took 
my place, his eyes rested on me with great attention ; he 
seemed satisfied, and slowly shook a great gray veil, 
which he carried on his arm for the first time, over 
his head and whole form. As I gave in our verdict, 
‘‘ Guilty," the veil collapsed, all was gone, and his place 
was empty. 

The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to 
usage, whether he had anything to say before sentence 
of Death should be passed upon him, indistinctly muttered 
something which was described in the leading newspapers 
of the following day as ‘‘ a few rambling, incoherent, and 
half-audible words, in which he was understood to com- 
plain that he had not had a fair trial, because the Fore- 
man of the Jury was prepossessed against him." The 
remarkable declaration that he really made was this ; 

My Lord, I knew 1 was a doomed man, when the Fore- 
man of my Jury came into the box. My Lord, I knew he 
would never let me off, because, before I was taken, he 
somehow got to my bedside in the night, woke me, and put a 
rope round my neckF 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


509 


n. 


THE SIGNAL-MAN. 

** Halloa I Below there I 

When he heard a voice thus calling* to him, he was 
standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, 
furled round its short pole. One would have thought, 
considering the nature of the ground, that he could not 
have doubted from what quarter the voice came ; but in- 
stead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the 
steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself 
about, and looked down the Line. There was something 
remarkable in his manner of doing so, though 1 could not 
have said for my life what. But I know it was remarka- 
ble enough to attract my notice, even though his flgure 
was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep 
trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the 
glow of an angry sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with 
my hand before I saw him at all. 

“ Halloa I Below ! 

From looking down the Line, he turned himself about 
again, and, raising his eyes, saw my flgure high above 
him. 

‘‘ Is there any path by which I can come down and 
speak to you ? 

He looked up at me without replying, and I looked 
down at him without pressing him too soon with a repeti- 
tion of my idle question. Just then there came a vague 
vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a 
violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me 
to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. 
When such vapor as rose to my height from this rapid 
train had passed me, and was skimming away over the 
landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling 
the flag he had shown while the train went by. 


510 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which 
he seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned 
with his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some 
two or three hundred yards distant. I called down to 
him, All right ! and made for that point. There, by 
dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag 
descending path notched out, which I followed. 

The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precip- 
itate. It was made through a clammy stone that became 
oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, 1 
found the way long enough to give me time to recall a 
singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he 
had pointed out the path. 

When I came down low enough upon the zigzag de- 
scent to see him again, I saw that he was standing be- 
tween the rails on the way by which the train had lately 
passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to 
appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left 
elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. 
His attitude was one of such expectation and watchful- 
ness, that I stopped a moment, wondering at it. 

I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon 
the level of the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw 
that he was a dark, sallow man, with a dark beard and 
rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and 
dismal a place as ever 1 saw. On either side a dripping- 
wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip 
of sky ; the perspective one way only a crooked prolon- 
gation of this great dungeon ; the shorter perspective in 
the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and 
the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive 
architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and for- 
bidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this 
spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell ; and so much 
cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as 
if I had left the natural world. 

Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have 
touched him. Not even then removing his eyes from 
mine, he stepped back one step, and lifted his hand. 

This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it 
had riveted my attention when I looked down from up 
yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose *, rot 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


511 


an unwelcome rarity, I hoped ? In me, he merely saw a 
man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his 
life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly 
awakened interest in these great works. To such pur- 
pose I spoke to him ; but I am far from sure of the terms 
I used ; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any 
conversation, there was something in the man that 
daunted me. 

He directed a most curious look towards the red light 
near the tunneks mouth, and looked all about it, as if 
something were missing from it, and then looked at me. 

That light was part of his charge, — was it not ? 

He answered in a low voice, — ‘‘ Don^t you know it 
is?^^ 

The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I pe- 
rused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was 
a spirit, not a man. I have speculated, since, whether 
there may have been infection in his mind. 

In my turn I stepped back. But, in making the action, 
I detected in his eyes some latent fear of me. This put 
the monstrous thought to flight. 

You look at me,^^ I said, forcing a smile, as if you 
had a dread of me.^^ 

I was doubtful,^^ he returned, ** whether I had seen 
you before. 

Where ? 

He pointed to the red light he had looked at. 

There ? ” I said. 

Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), 

Yes.'^ 

<< My good fellow, what should I do there ? However, 
be that as it may, I never was there, you may swear.^^ 

“ I think I may,^^ he rejoined. “ Yes. I am sure I 
may.^^ 

His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my 
remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had 
he much to do there ? Yes ; that was to say, he had 
enough responsibility to bear ; but exactness and watch- 
fulness were what was required of him, and of actual 
work — manual labor — he had next to none. To change 
that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron 
handle now and then, was all he had to do under that 


512 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


head. Regarding those many long and lonely hours of 
which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that 
the routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, 
and he had grown used to it. He had taught himself a 
language down here, — if only to know it by sight, and 
to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation 
could be called learning it. He had also worked at frac- 
tions and decimals, and tried a little algebra ; but he was, 
and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it 
necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that 
channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sun- 
shine from between those high stone walls ? Why, that 
depended upon times and circumstances. Under some 
conditions there would be less upon the Line than under 
others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the 
day and night. In bright weather, he did choose occa- 
sions for getting a little above these lower shadows ; but, 
being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell, 
and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety, 
the relief was less than I would suppose. 

He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk 
for an oflScial book in which he had to make certain en- 
tries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial, face, and 
needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken. On 
my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had 
been well educated, and (I hoped I might say without 
offence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed 
that instances of slight incongruity in such wise would 
rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men ; that 
he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force, 
even in that last desperate resource, the army ; and that 
he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway 
staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, 
sitting in that hut, — he scarcely could), a student of 
natural philosophy, and had attended lectures ; but he 
had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and 
jiever risen again. He had no complaint to ofibr about 
that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was 
far too late to make another. 

All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet man- 
ner, with his grave dark regards divided between me and 
the fire. He threw in the word, “ Sir,^^ from time to time, 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


513 


and especially when he referred to his youth, — as though 
to request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing 
but what I found him. He was several times interrupted 
by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send 
replies. Once he had to stand without the door, and dis- 
play a flag as a train passed, and make some verbal com- 
munication to the driver. In the discharge of his duties, 
I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, break- 
ing off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent un- 
til what he had to do was done. 

In a word, I should have set this man down as one of 
the safest of men to be employed in that capacity, but for 
the circumstance that while he was speaking to me he 
twice broke ofi‘ with a fallen color, turned his face to- 
wards the little bell when it did not ring, opened the 
door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the un- 
healthy damp), and looked out towards the red light near 
the mouth of the tunnel. On both of those occasions, he 
came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him 
which I had remarked, without being able to define, when 
we were so far asunder. 

Said I, when I rose to leave him, “ You almost make 
me think that I have met with a contented man.^^ 

(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead 
him on.) 

I believe I used to be so,'' he rejoined, in the low 
voice in which he had first spoken ; but I am troubled, 
sir, I am troubled. 

He would have recalled the words if he could. He had 
said them, however, and I took them up quickly. 

With what ? What is your trouble ? 

It is very difficult to impart, sir. It is very, very 
difficult to speak of. If ever you make me another visit, 
I will try to tell you.^^ 

But I expressly intend to make you another visit 
Say, when shall it be ? 

I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again 
at ten to-morrow night, sir.^' 

I will come at eleven. 

He thanked me, and went out at the door with me 
** I Ml show my white light, sir,^^ he said, in his peculiar 
low voice, “till you have found the way up. When you 


514 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


have found it, donH call out 1 And when you are at the 
top, don’t call out I ” 

His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to 
me, but I said no more than, Very well.” 

And when you come down to-morrow night, don’t 
call out 1 Let me ask you a parting question. What 
made you cry, ^ Halloa I Below there I ’ to-night ? ” 

‘‘ Heaven knows,” said I. I cried something to that 
effect — ” 

“Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. 
I know them well.” 

“ Admit those were the very words. I said them, no 
doubt, because I saw you below.” 

“ For no other reason ? ” 

“ What other reason could I possibly have ? ” 

“You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you 
in any supernatural way ? ” 

“ No.” 

He wished me good night, and held up his light. I 
walked by the side of the down Line of rails (with a very 
disagreeable sensation of a train coming behind me) until 
I found the path. It was easier to mount than to de- 
scend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure. 

Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the 
first notch of the zigzag next night as the distant clocks 
were striking eleven. He was waiting for me at the bot- 
tom, with his white light on. “ I have not called out,” I 
said, when we came close together; “ may I speak now ? ” 
“ By all means, sir.” “ Good night, then, and here ’s 
my hand.” “ Good night, sir, and here ’s mine.” With 
that we walked side by side to his box, entered it, closed 
the door, and sat down by the fire. 

“ I have made up my mind, sir,” he began, bending 
forward as soon as we were seated, and speaking in a 
tone but a little above a whisper, “ that you shall not 
have to ask me twice what troubles me. I took you foi 
some one else yesterday evening. That troubles me.” 

“ That mistake ? ” 

“ No. That some one else.” 

“ Who is it ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ Like me ? ” 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


515 


“ I donH know. I never saw the face. The left arm 
is across the face, and the right arm is waved, — violent- 
ly waved. This way.^^ 

I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the 
action of an arm gesticulating with the utmost passion 
and vehemence, — ‘‘ For God^s sake, clear the way I 

“ One moonlight night, said the man, I was sitting 
here, when I heard a voice cry, ‘ Halloa I Below there 1 ^ 
I started up, looked from that door, and saw this Some 
one else standing by the red light near the tunnel, waving 
as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse 
with shouting, and it cried, ‘Look out I Look outl^ And 
then again, ‘ Halloa I Below there I Look outi ' I caught 
up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran towards the figure, 
calling, ‘ What ^s wrong ? What has happened ? Where ? ^ 
It stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel. I ad- 
vanced so close upon it that I wondered at its keeping 
the sleeve across its eyes. I ran right up at it, and had 
my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when it 
was gone.^^ 

“ Into the tunnel,^^ said I. 

“No. I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. 
I stopped, and held my lamp above my head, and saw the 
figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains 
stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. 
I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had a mor- 
tal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all 
round the red light with my own red light, and I went 
up the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came 
down again, and ran back here. I telegraphed both 
ways, ‘ An alarm has been given. Is anything wrong ? ^ 
The answer came back, both ways, ‘ All well.^ 

Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out 
my spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a 
deception of his sense of sight ; and how that figures, 
originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister 
to the functions of the eye, were known to have often 
troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious 
of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it 
by experiments upon themselves. “ As to an imaginary 
cry,^^ said I, “ do but listen for a moment to the wind in 
this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the 
wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires I ” 


516 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat 
listening for a while, and he ought to know something of 
the wind and the wires, — he who so often passed long 
winter nights there, alone and watching. But he would 
beg to remark that he had not finished. 

I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, 
touching my arm : — 

Within six hours after the Appearance, the memo- 
rable accident on this Line happened, and within ten 
hours the dead and wounded were brought along through 
the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood. 

A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my 
best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that 
this was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to 
impress his mind. But it was unquestionable that re- 
markable coincidences did continually occur, and they 
must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. 
Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought 
I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear 
upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for 
coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life. 

He again begged to remark that he had not finished. 

I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into 
interruptions. 

This,^^ he said, again laying hie hand upon my arm, 
and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, was 
just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had 
recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morn- 
ing, as the day was breaking, I, standing at that door, 
looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again. 
He stopped, with a fixed look at me. 

Bid it cry out ? 

“ No. It was silent.^’ 

** Bid it wave its arm ? 

No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, with 
both hands before the face. Like this.^^ 

Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was 
an action of mourning. I have seen such an attitude in 
stone figures on tombs. 

“ Bid you go up to it ? 

** I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, 
partly because it had turned me faint. When I went to 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


517 


the door again, daylight was above me, and the ghost 
was gone.^^ 

“ But nothing followed ? Nothing came of this ? 

He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or 
thrice, giving a ghastly nod each time : — 

“ That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I 
noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked 
like a confusion of hands and heads, and something 
waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver. Stop ! 
He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted 
past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after 
it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. 
A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in .one 
of the compartments, and was brought in here, and 'aid 
down on this floor between us.^^ 

Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from 
the boards at which he pointed to himself. 

True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, so I tell 
it you.^^ 

I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and 
my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took 
up the story with a long lamenting wail. 

He resumed. Now, sir, mark this, and judge how 
my mind is troubled. The spectre came back a week 
ago. Ever since, it has been there, now and again, by 
fits and starts.^^ 

** At the light ? 

At the Danger-light.’’ 

“ What does it seem to do ? ” 

He repeated, if possible with increased passion and ve- 
hemence, that former gesticulation of, For God’s sake, 
clear the way ! ” 

Then he went on. I have no peace or rest for it. It 
calls to me, for many minutes together, in an agonized 
manner, ‘ Below there ! Look out I Look out ! ’ It 
stands waving to me. It rings my little bell — ” 

I caught at that. Did it ring your bell yesterday 
evening when I was here, and you went to the door ? ” 

“ Twice.” 

** Why, see,” said I, “ how your imagination misleads 
you. My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were open 
to the bell, and, if I am a living man, it did not ring at 


518 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


these times. No, nor at any other time, except when it 
was rung in the natural course of physical things by the 
station communicating with 3 ^ou.^’ 

He shook his head. I have never made a mistake as 
to that yet, sir. I have never confused the spectre^s 
ring with the man’s. The ghost’s ring is a strange vibra- 
tion in the bell that it derives from nothing else, and I 
have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I don’t 
wonder that you failed to hear it. But / heard it.” 

And did the spectre seem to be there, when you 
looked out ? ” 

“ It WAS there.” 

“ Both times ? ” 

He repeated firmly : Both times.” 

Will you come to the door with me, and look for it 
now ? ” 

He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat un- 
willing, but arose. I opened the door, and stood on the 
step, while he stood in the doorway. There was the 
Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel. 
There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting. 
There were the stars above them. 

Do you see it ? ” I asked him, taking particular note 
of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained, but 
not very much more so, perhaps, than my own had been 
when 1 had directed them earnestly towards the same 
spot. 

“ No,” he answered. ** It is not there.” 

‘‘ Agreed,” said I. 

We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our 
seats. I was thinking how best to improve this advan- 
tage, if it might be called one, when he took up the con- 
versation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming 
that there could be no serious question of fact between 
us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions. 

“ By this time you will fully understand, sir,” he said, 
** that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question. 
What does the spectre mean ? ” 

I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand. 

** What is its warning against ? ” he said, ruminating, 
with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning them 
on me. ** What is the danger ? Where is the danger f 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


519 


There is danger overhanging somewhere on the Line. 
Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be 
doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But 
surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can / do ? 

He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops 
from his heated forehead. 

If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on 
both, I can give no reason for it,^^ he went on, wiping the 
palms of his hands. “ I should get into trouble, and do 
no good. They would think I was mad. This is the 
way it would work, — Message: ‘Danger! Take care I ^ 
Answer : ‘ What Danger ? Where ? ^ Message : ‘ DonT 
know. But, for God’s sake, take care ! ’ They would 
displace me. What else could they do ? ” 

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the 
mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond 
endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving 
life. 

“ When it first stood under the Danger-light,” he went 
on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing 
his hands outward across and across his temples in an 
extremity of feverish distress, “ why not tell me where 
that accident was to happen, — if it must happen ? Why 
not tell me how it could be averted, — if it could have 
been averted ? When on its second coming it hid its 
face, why not tell me, instead, ‘ She is going to die. 
Let them keep her at home ’ ? If it came, on those two 
occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, 
and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me 
plainly now ? And I, Lord help me I A mere poor sig- 
nal-man on this solitary station I Why not go to some- 
body with credit to be believed, and power to act ? ” 

When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor 
man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had 
to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, 
setting aside all question of reality or unreality between 
us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly dis- 
charged his duty must do well, and that at least it was 
his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did 
not understand these confounding Appearances. In this 
efibrt I succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason 
him out of his conviction. He became calm ; the oceu- 


520 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


pations incidental to his post as the night advanced began 
to make larger demands on his attention ; and I left him 
at two in the morning. I had offered to stay through the 
nig'ht, but he would not hear of it. 

That I more than once looked back at the red light as 
I ascended the pathway, that I did not like the red light, 
and that I should have slept but poorly if my bed had 
been under it, I see no reason to conceal. Nor did I like 
the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl. 1 
see no reason to conceal that either. 

But what ran most in my thoughts was the considera- 
tion, how ought I to act, having become the recipient of 
this disclosure ? I had proved the man to be intelligent, 
vigilant, painstaking, and exact ; but how long might he 
remain so, in his state of mind ? Though in a subordi- 
nate position, still he held a most important trust, and 
would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the 
chances of his continuing to execute it with precision ? 

Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be some- 
thing treacherous in my communicating what he had told 
me to his superiors in the Company, without first being 
plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, 
I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him (other- 
wise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest 
medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and 
to take his opinion. A change in his time of duty would 
come round next night, he had apprised me, and he would 
be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon 
after sunset. I had appointed to return accordingly. 

Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out 
early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when 
I traversed the field-path near the top of the deep cutting. 
I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to myself, 
half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then 
be time to go to my signal-man’s box. 

Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and 
mechanically looked down, from the point from which I 
had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that 
seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, 
I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across 
his eyes, passionately waving his right arm. 

The nameless horror that opprr-ssed me passed in h 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


521 


moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a 
man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group 
of other men, standing at a short distance, to whom he 
seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The Dan- 
ger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little 
low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some 
wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger 
than a bed. 

With an irresistible sense that something was wrong, 
— with a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief 
had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no 
one to be sent to overlook or correct what he did, — I 
descended the notched path with all the speed I could 
make. 

What is the matter ? ” I asked the men. 

“ Signal-man killed this morning, sir.^^ 

“ Not the man belonging to that box ? 

" Yes, sir.’^ 

** Not the man I know ? ” 

“ You will recognize him, sir, if you knew him,’^ said 
the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering 
his own head, and raising an end of the tarpaulin, for 
his face is quite composed.’^ 

0, how did this happen, how did this happen ? I 
asked, turning from one to another as the hut closed in 
again. 

He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in 
England knew his work better. But somehow he was 
not clear of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. He 
had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As 
the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards 
her, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and 
was showing how it happened. Show the gentleman, 
Tom.'' 

The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back 
to his former place at the mouth of the tunnel : — 

“ Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, 
I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a per- 
spective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and 
1 knew him to be very careful. As he did n’t seem to 
take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were run- 
ning down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could 
call." 


522 


TWO GHOST STORIES. 


** What did you say ? 

“I said, ‘Below there I Look out I Look out I For 
God^s sake, clear the way I 

I started. 

“ Ah I it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off call- 
ing- to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, 
and I waved this arm to the last ; but it was no use.^' 

Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one 
of its curious circumstances more than on any other, I 
may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the 
warning of the Engine-Driver included, not only the words 
which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to me as 
haunting him, but also the words which I myself — not 
he — had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the 
gesticulation he had imitated. 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


I AM the boy at Mugby. That about what 1 am. 

You don^t know what I mean ? What a pity I But 1 
think you do. I think you must. Look here. I am the 
Boy at what is called The Refreshment Room at Mugby 
Junction, and what ’s proudest boast is, that it never yet 
refreshed a mortal being. 

Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment Room at 
Mugby Junction, in the height of twenty-seven cross 
draughts (I Ve often counted ^em while they brush the 
First Class hair twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, 
among the glasses, bounded on the norVest by the beer, 
stood pretty far to the right of a metallic object that ^s at 
times the tea-urn and at times the soup-tureen, according 
to the nature of the last twang imparted to its contents 
which are the same groundwork, fended off from the trav- 
eller by a barrier of stale sponge cakes erected atop of 
the counter, and lastly exposed sideways to the glare of 
Our Missises eye, — you ask a Boy so sitiwated, next 
time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything to drink; 
you take particular notice that he T1 try to seem not to 
hear you, that he ^11 appear in a absent manner to survey 
the Line through a transparent medium composed of your 
head and body, and that he wonT serve you as long as 
you can possibly bear it. That ^s me. 

What a lark it is I We are the Model Establishment, 
we are, at Mugby. Other Refreshment Rooms send their 
imperfect young ladies up to be finished ofi' by our Missis. 
For some of the young ladies, when they ^re new to the 
business, come into it mild I Ah I Our Missis, she soon 


524 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


takes that 07it of ’em. Why, I originally come into the 
business meek myself. But Our Missis, she soon took 
that out of me. 

What a delightful lark it is 1 I look upon us Refresh- 
menters as ockipyiug the only proudly independent foot- 
ing on the Line. There ’s Papers, for instance, — my 
honorable friend, if he will allow me to call him so, — him 
as belongs to Smith’s bookstall. Why, he no more dares 
to be up to our Refreshmenting games than he dares to 
jump atop of a locomotive with her steam at full pressure, 
and cut away upon her alone, driving himself, at limited- 
mail speed. Papers, he ’d get his head punched at every 
compartment, first, second, and third, the whole length 
of a train, if he was to ventur to imitate my demeanor. 
It ’s the same with the porters, the same with the guards, 
the same with the ticket clerks, the same the whole way 
up to the secretary, traffic manager, or very chairman. 
There ain’t a one among ’em on the nobly independent 
footing we are. Did you ever catch one of them,, when 
you wanted anything of him, making a system of sur- 
veying the Line through a transparent medium com- 
posed of your head and body ? I should hope not. 

You should see our Bandolining Room at Mugby 
Junction. It’s led to by the door behind the counter, 
which you ’ll notice usually stands ajar, and it ’s the 
room where Our Missis and our young ladies Bandolines 
their hair. You should see ’em at it, betwixt trains, 
Bandolining away, as if they was anointing themselves 
for the combat. When you ’re telegraphed you should 
see their noses all a going up with scorn, as if it was a 
part of the working of the same Cooke and Wheatstone 
electrical machinery. You should hear Our Missis give 
the word, “ Here comes the Beast to be Fed ! ” and then 
you should see ’m indignantly skipping across the Line, 
from the Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin 
to pitch the stale pastry into the plates, and chuck the 
sawdust sangwiches under the glass covers, and get out 
the — ha, ha, ha ! — the Sherry, — O my eye, my eye ! — 
for your Refreshment. 

It ’s only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free 
(by which, of course, I mean to say Britannia) that Re- 
freshmenting is so effective, so ’olesome, so constitutional 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


525 


a check upon the public. There was a foreigner, which 
having politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young 
ladies and Our Missis for '' a leetel gloss hoff prarndee,^^ 
and having had the Line surveyed through him by all 
and no other acknowledgment, was a proceeding at last 
to help himself, as seems to be the custom in his own 
country, when Our Missis, with her hair almost a com- 
ing un-Bandolined with rage, and her eyes omitting 
sparks, flew at him, cotched the decanter out of his hand, 
and said, Put it down I I won’t allow that ! ” The 
foreigner turned pale, stepped back with his arms stretched 
out in front of him, his hands clasped, and his shoulders 
riz, and exclaimed : “ Ah ! Is it possible, this ! That 
these disdaineous females and this ferocious old woman 
are placed here by the administration, not only to em- 
poison the voyagers, but to affront them I Great Heaven I 
How arrives it ? The English people. Or is he then a 
slave ? Or idiot ? ” Another time, a merry, wide-awake 
American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it out, and 
had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in 
vain to sustain exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and 
had been rather extra Bandolined and Line-surveyed 
through, when, as the bell was ringing and he paid Our 
Missis, he says, very loud and good-tempered : I tell 
Yew what ’t is, ma’arm. I la’af. Theer ! I la’af. I 
Dew. I oughter ha’ seen most things, for I hail from the 
Onlimited side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I haive travelled 
right slick over the Limited, head on through Jeerusalemm 
and the East, and likeways France and Italy, Europe Old 
World, and am now upon the track to the Chief Europian 
Village ; but such an Institution as Yew, and Yewer 
young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, afore 
the glorious Tarnal I never did see yet ! And if I hain’t 
found the eighth wonder of monarchical Creation, in find- 
ing Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s 
solid and liquid, all as aforesaid, established in a country 
where the people air not absolute Loo-naticks, I am Extra 
Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the innermostest 
grit I Wheerfur — Theer! — I la’af! I Dew, ma’arm. 
I la’af 1 ” And so he went, stamping and shaking his 
sides, along the platform all the way to his own compart 
ment. 


526 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


I think it was her standing np agin the Foreigner ab 
giv^ Our Missis the idea of going over to France, ana 
droring a comparison betwixt Refreshmenting as followed 
among the frog-eaters, and Refreshmenting as triumphant 
in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which 
of course, I mean to say agin, Britannia). Our young 
ladies. Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unani- 
mous opposed to her going : for, as they says to Our 
Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends of the 
herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of any- 
think, but above all of business. Why then should you 
tire yourself to prove what is aready proved ? Our 
Missis, however (being a teazer at all pints), stood out 
grim obstinate, and got a return pass by Southeastern 
Tidal, to go right through, if such should be her disposi- 
tions, to Marseilles. 

Sniff is husband to Mrs. Sniff, and is a regular insignifi- 
cant cove. He looks arter the sawdust department in a 
back room, and is sometimes, when we are very hard put 
to it, let behind the counter with a corkscrew ; but never 
when it can be helped, his demeanor towards the public 
being disgusting servile. How Mrs. Sniff ever come so 
far to lower herself as to marry him, I don^t know ; but I 
suppose he does, and I should think he wished he did n^t, 
for he leads a awful life. Mrs. Sniff could n’t be much 
harder with him if he was public. Similarly, Miss Whiff 
and Miss Piff, taking the tone of Mrs. Sniff, they shoulder 
Sniff about when he is let in with a corkscrew, and they 
whisk things out of his hands when in his servility he 
is a going to let the public have ’em, and they snap him 
up when in the crawling baseness of his spirit he is a go- 
ing to answer a public question, and they drore more 
tears into his eyes than ever the mustard does which he 
all day long lays on to the sawdust. (But it ain’t 
strong. ) Once, when Sniff had the repulsiveness to reach 
across to get the milkpot to hand over for a baby, I see 
Our Missis in her rage catch him by both his shoulders, 
and spin him out into the Bandolining Room. 

But Mrs. Sniff, — how different I She’s the one I She ’s 
the one as you ’ll notice to be always looking another way 
from you, when you look at her. She ’s the one with the 
small waist buckled in tight in front, and with the lace cuffs 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


527 


at her wrists, which she puts on the edge of the counter 
before her, and stands a smoothing while the public foams. 
This smoothing the cuffs and looking another way while 
the public foams is the last accomplishment taught to the 
young ladies as come to Mugby to be finished by Our 
Missis ; and it ^s always taught by Mrs. Sniff. 

When Our Missis went away upon her journey, Mrs. 
Sniff was left in charge. She did hold the public in check 
most beautiful 1 In all my time, I never see half so many 
cups of tea given without milk to people as wanted it 
with, nor half so many cups of tea with milk given to 
people as wanted it without. When foaming ensued, 
Mrs. Sniff would say : “ Then you M better settle it 
among yourselves, and change with one another. It 
was a most highly delicious lark. I enjoyed the Refresh- 
menting business more than ever, and was so glad I had 
took to it when young. 

Our Missis returned. It got circulated among the 
young ladies, and it as it might be penetrated to me 
through the crevices of the Bandolining Room that she 
had Orrors to reveal, if revelations so contemptible could 
be dignified with the name. Agitation become awak- 
ened. Excitement was up in the stirrups. Expectation 
stood a-tiptoe. At length it was put forth that on our 
slackest evening in the week, and at our slackest time of 
that evening betwixt trains. Our Missis would give her 
views of foreign Refreshmenting, in the Bandolining 
Room. 

It was arranged tasteful for the purpose. The Bando 
lining table and glass was hid in a corner, a arm-chair 
was elevated on a packing-case for Our Missis’s ockypa- 
tion, a table and a tumbler of water (no sherry in it, 
thankee) was placed beside it. Two of the pupils, the 
season being autumn, and hollyhocks and daliahs being 
in, ornamented the wall with three devices in those flow- 
ers. On one might be read, ‘‘May Albion never Learn ” ; 
on another, “ Keep the Public Down ” ; on another, “ Our 
Refreshmenting Charter.” The whole had a beautiful 
appearance, with which the beauty of the sentiments cor- 
responded. 

On Our Missis’s brow was wrote Severity, as she as- 
cended the fatal platform. (Not that that was anythink 


528 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


new.) Miss Whiff and Miss Piff sat at her feet. Three 
chairs from the Waiting Room might have been perceived 
by a average eye, in front of her, on which the pupils 
was accommodated. Behind them, a very close observer 
might have discerned a Boy. Myself. 

‘‘ Where,^^ said Our Missis, glancing gloomily around, 
“ is Sniff? 

thought it better,^^ answered Mrs. Sniff, '^that he 
should not be let come in. He is such an Ass.^^ 

‘‘ No doubt,^^ assented Our Missis. But for that rea- 
son is it not desirable to improve his mind ? 

“0, nothing will ever improve him,” said Mrs, Sniff. 

However,’^ pursued Our Missis, call him in, Eze- 
kiel. 

I called him in. The appearance of the low-minded 
cove was hailed with disapprobation from all sides, on 
account of his having brought his corkscrew with him. 
He pleaded “the force of habit. 

“ The force I ” said Mrs. Sniff. “ Don’t let us have 
you talking about force, for Gracious’ sake. There I Do 
stand still where you are, with your back against the 
wall.” 

He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the 
mean way in which he will even smile at the public if he 
gets a chance (language can say no meaner of him), and 
he stood upright near the door with the back of his head 
agin the wall, as if he was a waiting for somebody to 
come and measure his heighth for the Army. 

“I should not enter, ladies,” says Our Missis, “on 
the revolting disclosures I am about to make, if it was 
not in the hope that they will cause you to be yet more 
implacable in the exercise of the power you wield in a 
constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the con- 
stitutional motto which I see before me,” — it was behind 
her, but the words sounded better so, — “ ‘ May Albion 
never learn I ’ ” 

Here the pupils as had made the motto admired it, and 
cried, “ Hear ! Hear I Hear I ” Sniff, showing an incli- 
nation to join in chorus, got himself frowned down by 
every brow. 

“ The baseness of the French,” pursued Our Missis, 
“ as displayed in the fawning nature of their Refresh- 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


529 


menting, equals, if not surpasses, anythink as was ever 
heard of the baseness of the celebrated Bonapaite/^ 

Miss Whiff, Miss Pifif, and me, we drored a heavy 
breath, equal to saying, We thought as much I Miss 
Whiff and Miss Piff seeming to object to my droring 
mine along with theirs, I drored another to aggravate 
^em. 

Shall I be believed,^’ says Our Missis, with flashing 
eyes, when I tell you that no sooner had I set my foot 
upon that treacherous shore — 

Here Sniff, either busting out mad, or thinking aloud, 
says, in a low voice : “ Feet. Plural, you know.^^ 

The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned 
by all eyes, added to his being beneath contempt, was 
suflScient punishment for a cove so grovelling. In the 
midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the turned- 
up female noses with which it was pervaded. Our Missis 
went on : — 

“ Shall I be believed when I tell you, that no soonei 
had I landed,^’ this word with a killing look at Sniff, ‘‘ on 
that treacherous shore, than I was ushered into a Re- 
freshment Room where there were — I do not exaggerate 
— actually eatable things to eat ? 

A groan burst from the ladies. I not only did myself 
the honor of jining, but also of lengthening it out. 

“ Where there were,^^ Our Missis added, “ not only 
eatable things to eat, but also drinkable things to drink ? 

A murmur, swelling almost into a scream, ariz. Miss 
Piff, trembling with indignation, called out, “ Name I 
“ I will name,^^ said Our Missis. There was roast 
fowls, hot and cold ; there was smoking roast veal sur- 
rounded with browned potatoes ; there was hot soup with 
(again I ask shall 1 be credited ?) nothing bitter in it, 
and no flour to choke off the consumer ; there was a vari- 
ety of cold dishes set off with jelly ; there was salad ; 
there was — mark me ! — fresh pastry, and that of a light 
construction ; there was a luscious show of fruit ; there 
was bottles and decanters of sound small wine, of every 
size, and adapted to every pocket ; the same odious state- 
ment will apply to brandy ; and these were set out upon 
the counter so that all could help themselves. 

Our Missises lips so quivered, that Mrs. Sniff, though 


530 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


scarcely less convulsed than she were, got up and held 
the tumbler to them. 

“ This,^^ proceeds Our Missis, ‘‘was my first unconsti- 
tutional experience. Well would it have been if it had 
been my last and worst. But no. As I proceeded far- 
ther into that enslaved and ignorant land, its aspect 
became more hideous. I need not explain to this assem- 
bly the ingredients and formation of the British Eefresh- 
ment sangwich ? ” 

Universal laughter, — except from Sniff, who, as sang- 
wich-cutter, shook his head in a state of the utmost dejec- 
tion as he stood with it agin the wall. 

“ Well ! said Our Missis, with dilated nostrils. “ Take 
a fresh, crisp, long, crusty penny loaf made of the whitest 
and best flour. Cut it longwise through the middle. In- 
sert a fair and nicely fitting slice of ham. Tie a smart 
piece of ribbon round the middle of the whole to bind it 
together. Add at one end a neat wrapper of clean white 
paper by which to hold it. And the universal French 
Refreshment sangwich busts on your disgusted vision.’^ 

A cry of “ Shame I from all — except Sniff, which 
rubbed his stomach with a soothing hand. 

“ I need not,^^ said Our Missis, “ explain to this assem- 
bly the usual formation and fitting of the British Refresh- 
ment Room 

No, no, and laughter. Sniff agin shaking his head in 
low spirits agin the wall. 

“ Well,’^ said Our Missis, “ what would you say to a 
general decoration of every think, to hangings (sometimes 
elegant), to easy velvet furniture, to abundance of little 
tables, to abundance of little seats, to brisk bright wait- 
ers, to great convenience, to a pervading cleanliness and 
tastefulness positively addressing the public, and making 
the Beast thinking itself worth the pains ? 

Contemptuous fury on the part of all the ladies. Mrs. 
Sniff looking as if she wanted somebody to hold her, and 
everybody else looking as if they ’d rayther not. 

“ Three times, said Our Missis, working herself into a 
truly terrimenjious state, — “three times did I see these 
sbamful things, only between the coast and Paris, and 
not counting either : at Hazebroucke, at Arras, at Ami- 
ens But worse remains. Tell me, what would you call 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


531 


a person who should propose in England that there should 
be kept, say at our own model Mugby Junction, pretty 
baskets, each holding an assorted cold lunch and dessert 
for one, each at a certain fixed price, and each within a 
passenger’s power to take away, to empty in the carriage 
at perfect leisure, and to return at another station fifty or 
a hundred miles farther on ? ” 

There was disagreement what such a person should bo 
called. Whether revolutionist, atheist. Bright (7 said 
him), or Un-English. Miss Pifif screeched her shrill opin- 
ion last, in the words : ‘‘A malignant maniac ! ” 

"‘I adopt,” says Our Missis, '‘the brand set upon such 
a person by the righteous indignation of my friend Miss 
Piif. A malignant maniac. Know, then, that that malig- 
nant maniac has sprung from the congenial soil of France, 
and that his malignant madness was in unchecked action 
on this same part of my journey.” 

I noticed that Sniff was a rubbing his hands, and that 
Mrs. Sniff had got her eye upon him. But I did not take 
more particular notice, owing to the excited state in 
which the young ladies was, and to feeling myself called 
upon to keep it up with a howl. 

" On my experience south of Paris,” said Our Missis, 
in a deep tone, " I will not expatiate. Too loathsome 
were the task ! But fancy this. Fancy a guard coming 
round, with the train at full speed, to inquire how many 
for dinner. Fancy his telegraphing forward the number 
of diners. Fancy every one expected, and the table 
elegantly laid for the complete party. Fancy a charming 
dinner, in a charming room, and the head-cook, concerned 
for the honor of every dish, superintending in his clean 
white jacket and cap. Fancy the Beast travelling six 
hundred miles on end, very fast, and with great punctual- 
ity, yet being taught to expect all this to be done for it!” 
A spirited chorus of " The Beast I ” 

I noticed that Sniff was agin a rubbing his stomach 
with a soothing hand, and that he had drored up one leg. 
But agin I did n’t take particular notice, looking on my- 
self as called upon to stimilate public feeling. It being 
a lark besides. 

" Putting everything together,” said Our Missis, 
“ French Refreshmenting comes to this, and 0, it comes 


532 


THE BOY AT MUGBY. 


to a nice total I First : eatable things to eat, and drinka- 
ble things to drink/^ 

A groan from the young ladies, kep’ up by me. 

Second : convenience, and even elegance. 

Another groan from the young ladies, kep^ up by me. 

Third : moderate charges. 

Tills time a groan from me, kep’ up by the young 
ladies. 

“Fourth: — and here,^^ says Our Missis, “I claim 
your angriest sympathy, — attention, common civility, 
nay, even politeness I ” 

Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad all 
together. 

“ And I cannot in conclusion,’^ says Our Missis, with 
her spitefullest sneer, “ give you a completer pictur of 
that despicable nation (after what I have related), than 
assuring you that they would n’t bear our constitutional 
ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction for a 
single month, and that they would turn us to the right- 
about and put another system in our places, as soon as 
look at us ; perhaps sooner, for I do not believe they 
have the good taste to care to look at us twice.” 

The swelling tumult was arrested in its rise. Sniff, 
bore away by his servile disposition, had drored up. his 
leg with a higher and a higher relish, and was now dis- 
covered to be waving his corkscrew over his head. It 
was at this moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kep’ her eye 
upon him like the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim. 
Our Missis followed them both out, and cries was heard 
in the sawdust department. 

You come into the Down Refreshment Room at the 
Junction making believe you don’t know me, and I ’ll 
pint you out with my right thumb over my shoulder 
which is Our Missis, and which is Miss Whiff, and which 
is Miss Piff, and which is Mrs. Sniff. But you won’t get 
a chance to see Sniff, because he disappeared that night. 
Whether he perished, tore to pieces, I cannot say ; but 
his corkscrew alone remains to bear witness to the servil- 
ity of his disposition. 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


IN THREE CHAPTERS. 


CHAPTER 1. 

IN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHEST^CR. 

Strictly speaking, there were only six Poor Travellers ; 
but, being a Traveller myself, though an idle one, and be- 
ing withal as poor as I hope to be, I brought the number 
up to seven. This word of explanation is due at once, for 
what says the inscription over the quaint old door ? 

Richard Watts, Esq. 
by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 15'79, 
founded this Charity 
for Six poor Travellers, 
who not being Rogues, or Proctors, 

May receive gratis for one Night, 

Lodging, Entertainment, 
and Four-pence each. 

It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, 
of all the good days in the year upon a Christmas eve, 
that I stood reading this inscription over the quaint old 
door in question. I had been wandering about the 
neighboring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard 
Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting 
out of it like a ship^s figure-head ; and I had felt that I 
could do no less, as I gave the Verger his fee, than in- 
quire the way to Wattses Charity. The way being very 
short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the in- 
scription and the quaint old door. 

‘‘ Now,^^ said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, 
'' I know I am not a Proctor ; I wonder whether I am a 
Rogue I ” 


534 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced two or 
three pretty faces which might have had smaller attrac- 
tion for a moral Goliath than they had had for me, who 
am but a Tom Thumb in that way, I came to the conclu- 
sion that I was not a Kogue. So, beginning to regard 
the establishment as in some sort my property, bequeathed 
to me and divers co-legatees, share and share alike, by the 
Worshipful Master Richard Watts, I stepped backward 
into the road to survey my inheritance. 

I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and 
venerable air, with the quaint old door already three 
times mentioned (an arched door), choice little long low 
lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. The silent 
High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams 
and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly gar- 
nished with a queer old clock that projects over the pave- 
ment out of a grave red-brick building, as if Time carried 
on business there, and hung out his sign. Sooth to say, 
he did an active stroke of work in Rochester, in the old 
days of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans ; 
and down to the times of King John, when the rugged 
castle — I will not undertake to say how many hundreds 
of years old then — was abandoned to the centuries of 
weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its 
walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had 
picked its eyes out. 

I was very well pleased, both with my property and 
its situation. While I was yet surveying it with grow- 
ing content, I espied, at one of the upper lattices which 
stood open, a decent body, of a wholesome matronly ap- 
pearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly addressed to 
mine. They said so plainly, ‘‘Do you wish to see the 
house ? that I answered aloud, “ Yes, if you please. 
And within a minute the old door opened, and I bent my 
head, and went down two steps into the entry. 

“ This,” said the matronly presence, ushering me into 
a low room on the right, “is where the Travellers sit by 
the fire, and cook what bits of suppers they buy with 
their fourpences.” 

“ Oh ! Then they have no Entertainment ? ” said I. 
For the inscription over the outer door was still run- 
ning in my head, and I was mentally repeating, in a 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


635 


kind of tune, Lodging, entertainment, and fourpence 
each.^^ 

They have a fire provided for ^em,’^ returned the 
matron, — a mighty civil person, not, as 1 could make 
out, overpaid ; and these cooking-utensils. And this 
what ^s painted on a board is the rules for their behavior. 
They have their fourpences when they get their tickets 
from the steward over the way, — for I don^t admit ^em 
myself, they must get their tickets first, — and sometimes 
one buys a rasher of bacon, and another a herring, and 
another a pound of potatoes, or what not. Sometimes 
two or three of ’em will club their fourpences together, 
and make a supper that way. But not much of anything 
is to be got for fourpence, at present, when provisions 
is so dear.” 

'' True indeed,” I remarked. I had been looking about 
the room, admiring its snug fireside at the upper end, its 
glimpse of the street through the low mullioned window, 
and its beams overhead. “ It is very comfortable,” said I. 

“ Ill-conwenient,” observed the matronly presence. 

1 liked to hear her say so ; for it showed a commend- 
able anxiety to execute in no niggardly spirit the inten- 
tions of Master Richard Watts. But the room was really 
so well adapted to its purpose that I protested, quite 
enthusiastically, against her disparagement. 

‘‘ Nay, ma’am,” said I, ‘‘ I am sure it is warm in win- 
ter and cool in summer. It has a look of homely wel- 
come and soothing rest. It has a remarkably cosey fire- 
side, the very blink of which, gleaming out into the street 
upon a winter night, is enough to warm all Rochester’s 
heart. And as to the convenience of the six Poor Trav- 
ellers — ” 

I don’t mean them,” returned the presence. I 
speak of its being an ill-conwenience to myself and my 
daughter having no other room to sit in of a night.” 

This was true enough, but there was another quaint 
room of corresponding dimensions on the opposite side 
of the entry : so I stepped across to it, through the open 
doors of both rooms, and asked what this chamber was 
for. 

‘‘This,” returned the presence, “is the Board Room. 
Where the gentlemen meet when they come here.” 


536 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


Let me see. 1 had counted from the street six upper 
windows besides these on the ground-story. Making a 
perplexed calculation in my mind, I rejoined, “ Then the 
six Poor Travellers sleep up stairs ? 

My new friend shook her head. They sleep/' she 
answered, ^^in two little outer galleries at the back, 
where their beds has always been, ever since the Charity 
was founded. It being so very ill-conwenient to me as 
things is at present, the gentlemen are going to take off 
a bit of the back yard, and make a slip of a room for 'em 
there to sit in before they go to bed." 

“ And then the six Poor Travellers," said I, will be 
entirely out of the house ? " 

Entirely out of the house," assented the presence, 
comfortably smoothing her hands. “ Which is considered 
much better for all parties, and much more conwenient." 

I had been a little startled, in the Cathedral, by the 
emphasis with which the effigy of Master Richard Watts 
was bursting out of his tomb ; but I began to think, now, 
that it might be expected to come across the High Street 
some stormy night, and make a disturbance here. 

Howbeit, I kept my thoughts to myself, and accom- 
panied the presence to the little galleries at the back. I 
found them on a tiny scale, like the galleries in old inn 
yards ; and they were very clean. While I was looking 
at them, the matron gave me to understand that the pre~ 
scribed number of Poor Travellers were forthcoming every 
night from year's end to year's end ; and that the beds 
were always occupied. My questions upon this, and 
her replies, brought us back to the Board Room so essen- 
tial to the dignity of “ the gentlemen," where she showed 
me the printed accounts of the Charity hanging up by the 
window. From them I gathered that the greater part of 
the property bequeathed by the Worshipful Master Rich- 
ard Watts for the maintenance of this foundation was, at 
the period of his death, mere marsh-land ; but that, in 
course of time, it had been reclaimed and built upon, and 
was very considerably increased in value. I found, too, 
that about a thirtieth part of the annual revenue was 
now expended on the purposes commemorated in the in- 
scription over the door ; the rest being handsomely laid 
out in Chancery, law expenses, collectorship, receivership^ 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


.537 


poundage, and other appendages of management, highly 
complimentary to the importance of the six Poor Trav- 
ellers. In short, I made the not entirely new discovery 
that it may be said of an establishment like this, in dear 
Old England, as of the fat oyster in the American story, 
that it takes a good many men to swallow it whole. 

“ And pray, ma’am, said I, sensible that the blank- 
ness of my face began to brighten as a thought occurred 
to me, '‘could one see these Travellers ? ” 

Well I she returned dubiously, no I "Not to-night, for 
instance ? ” said I. Well ! she returned more positively, 
no. Nobody ever asked to see them, and nobody ever 
did see them. 

As I am not easily balked in a design when I am set 
upon it, I urged to the good lady that this was Christmas 
eve ; that Christmas comes but once a year, — which is 
unhappily too true, for when it begins to stay with us the 
whole year round we shall make this earth a very differ- 
ent place ; that I was possessed by the desire to treat 
the Travellers to a supper and a temperate glass- of hot 
Wassail ; that the voice of Fame had been heard in that 
land, declaring my ability to make hot Wassail ; that if 
I were permitted to hold the feast, I should be found con- 
formable to reason, sobriety, and good hours ; in a word, 
that I could be merry and wise myself, and had been 
even known at a pinch to keep others so, although I was 
decorated with no badge or medal, and was not a Brother, 
Orator, Apostle, Saint, or Prophet of any denomination 
whatever. In the end I prevailed, to my great joy. It 
was settled that at nine o’clock that night a Turkey and 
a piece of Roast Beef should smoke upon the board ; and 
that I, faint and unworthy minister for once of Master 
Richard Watts, should preside as the Christmas-suppei 
host of the six Poor Travellers. 

I went back to my inn to give the necessary directions 
for the Turkey and Roast Beef, and, during the remainder 
of the day, could settle to nothing for thinking of the 
Poor Travellers. When the wind blew hard against the 
windows, — it was a cold day, with dark gusts of sleet 
alternating with periods of wild brightness, as if the year 
were dying fitfully, — I pictured them advancing towards 
their resting-place along various cold roads, and felt de- 


538 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


lighted to think how little they foresaw the supper that 
awaited them. I painted their portraits in my mind, and 
indulged in little heightening touches. I made them foot- 
sore ; I made them weary ; I made them carry packs and 
bundles ; I made them stop by finger-posts and mile- 
stones, leaning on their bent sticks, and looking wistfully 
at what was written there ; I made them lose their way, 
and filled their five wits with apprehensions of lying out 
all night, and being frozen to death. I took up my hat, 
and went out, climbed to the top of the Old Castle, and 
looked over the windy hills that slope down to the Med- 
way, almost believing that I could descry some of my 
Travellers in the distance. After it fell dark, and the 
Cathedral bell was heard in the invisible steeple — quite 
a bower of frosty rime when 1 had last seen it — striking 
five, six, seven, 1 became so full of my Travellers that I 
could eat no dinner, and felt constrained to watch them 
still in the red coals of my fire. They were all arrived 
by this time, I thought, had got their tickets, and were 
gone in. — There my pleasure was dashed by the reflec- 
tion that probably some Travellers had come too late and 
were shut out. 

After the Cathedral bell had struck eight, I could smell 
a delicious savor of Turkey and Roast Beef rising to the 
window of my adjoining bedroom, which looked down 
into the inn-yard just where the lights of the kitchen red- 
dened a massive fragment of the Castle Wall. It was 
high time to make the Wassail now; therefore I had up 
the materials (which, together with their proportions and 
combinations, I must decline to impart, as the only secret 
of my own I was ever known to keep), and made a glo- 
rious jorum. Not in a bowl ; for a bowl anywhere but 
on a shelf is a low superstition, fraught with cooling and 
slopping ; but in a brown earthen-ware pitcher, tenderly 
suffocated, when full, with a coarse cloth. It being now 
upon the stroke of nine, I set out for Watts’s Charity, 
carrying my brown beauty in my arms. I would trust 
Ben, the waiter, with untold gold ; but there are strings 
in the human heart which must never be sounded by 
another, and drinks that I make myself are those strings 
in mine. 

The Travellers were all assembled, the cloth was laid; 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


539 


aud Ben had brought a great billet of wood, and hud laid 
it artfully on the top of the fire, so that a touch or two of 
the poker after supper should make a roaring blaze. Hav- 
ing deposited my brown beauty in a red nook of the 
hearth, inside the fender, where she soon began to sing 
like an ethereal cricket, diffusing at the same time odors 
as of ripe vineyards, spice forests, and orange groves, — 
1 say, having stationed my beauty in a place of security 
and improvement, I introduced myself to my guests by 
shaking hands all round, and giving them a hearty wel- 
come. 

I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, my- 
self. Secondly, a very decent man indeed, with his right 
arm in a sling, who had a certain clean agreeable smell 
of wood about him, from which I judged him to have 
something to do with ship-building. Thirdly, a little 
sailor-boy, a mere child, with a profusion of rich dark 
brown hair, and deep womanly-looking eyes. Fourthly, 
a shabby-genteel personage in a threadbare black suit, and 
apparently in very bad circumstances, with a dry, suspi- 
cious look ; the absent buttons on his waistcoat eked out 
with red tape ; and a bundle of extraordinarily tattered 
papers sticking out of an inner breast-pocket. Fifthly, a 
foreigner by birth, but an Englishman in speech, who 
carried his pipe in the band of his hat, and lost no time 
in telling me, in an easy, simple, engaging way, that he 
was a watchmaker from Geneva, and travelled all about 
the continent, mostly on foot, working as a journeyman, 
and seeing new countries, — possibly (I thought) also 
smuggling a watch or so, now and then. Sixthly, a little 
widow, who had been very pretty and was still very 
young, but whose beauty had been wrecked in some great 
misfortune, and whose manner was remarkably timid, 
scared, and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a Traveller 
of a kind familiar to my boyhood, but now almost obso- 
lete, — a Book-Pedler, who had a quantity of Pamphlets 
and Numbers with him, and who presently boasted that 
he could repeat more verses in an evening than he could 
sell in a twelvemonth. 

All these I have mentioned in the order in which they 
sat at table. I presided, and the matronly presence 
faced me. We were not long in taking our places, for 


540 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


the supper had arrived with me, in the following proces- 
sion. 

Myself with the pitcher. 

Ben with Beer. 

Inattentive Boy with hot Inattentive Boy with hot 
plates. plates. 

THE TURKEY. 

Female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot. 
THE BEEF. 

Man with Tray on his head, containing Vegetables and 
Sundries. 

Volunteer hostler from Hotel, grinning. And rendering 
no assistance. 

As we passed along the High Street, Comet-like, we 
left a long tail of fragrance behind us which caused the 
public to stop, sniffing in wonder. We had previously 
left at the corner of the inn-yard a wall-eyed young man 
connected with the Fly department, and well accustomed 
to the sound of a railway whistle which Ben always car- 
ries in his pocket, whose instructions were, so soon as he 
should hear the whistle blown, to dash into the kitchen, 
seize the hot plum-pudding and mince pies, and speed 
with them to Wattses Charity, where they would be 
received (he was further instructed) by the sauce-female, 
who would be provided with brandy in a blue state of 
combustion. 

All these arrangements were executed in the most exact 
and punctual manner. I never saw a finer turkey, finer 
beef, or greater prodigality of sauce and gravy ; and my 
Travellers did wonderful justice to everything set before 
them. It made my heart rejoice to observe how their 
wind and frost hardened faces softened in the clatter of 
plates and knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and 
supper heat. While their hats and caps and wrappers, 
hanging up, a few small bundles on the ground in a cor- 
ner, and in another corner three or four old walking-sticks, 
worn down at the end to mere fringe, linked this snug 
interior with the bleak outside in a golden chain. 

When supper was done, and my brown beauty had 
been elevated on the table, there was a general requisi- 
tion to me to “ take the corner ; which suggested to 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


541 


me comfortably enough how much my friends here made 
of a fire, — for when had I ever thought so highly of the 
corner, since the days when I connected it with Jack 
Horner ? However, as I declined, Ben, whose touch on 
all convivial instruments is perfect, drew the table apart, 
and instructing my Travellers to open right and left on 
either side of me, and form round the fire, closed up the 
centre with myself and my chair, and preserved the order 
we had kept at table. He had already, in a tranquil man- 
ner, boxed the ears of the inattentive boys until they had 
been by imperceptible degrees boxed out of the room ; 
and he now rapidly skirmished the sauce-female into the 
High Street, disappeared, and softly closed the door. 

This was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the 
billet of wood. I tapped it three times, like an enchanted 
talisman, and a brilliant host of merry-makers burst out 
of it, and sported off by the chimney, — rushing up the 
middle in a fiery country dance, and never coming down 
again. Meanwhile, by their sparkling light, which threw 
our lamp into the shade, I filled the glasses, and gave my 
Travellers, Christmas ! — Christmas eve, my friends, when 
the shepherds, who were Poor Travellers, too, in their 
way, heard the Angels sing, “ On earth, peace. Good- 
will towards men I 

I don’t know who was the first among us to think that 
we ought to take hands as we sat, in deference to the 
toast, or whether any one of us anticipated the others, 
but at any rate we all did it. We then drank to the 
memory of the good Master Richard Watts. And I wish 
his Ghost may never have had worse usage under that 
roof than it had from us I 

It was the witching time for Story-telling. Our whole 
life. Travellers,” said I, ‘Ms a story more or less intelligi- 
ble, — generally less ; but we shall read it by a clearer 
light when it is ended. I, for one, am so divided this 
night between fact and fiction, that I scarce know which 
is which. Shall I beguile the time by telling you a story 
as we sit here ? ” 

They all answered, yes. I had little to tell them, but 
I was bound by my own proposal. Therefore, after look- 
ing for a while at the spiral column of smoke wreathing 
up from my brown beauty, through which I could have 


542 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


almost sworn I saw the effigy of Master Richard Watts 
less startled than usual, I fired away. 

THE STORY OF RICHARD DOUBLEDICK. 

In the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety- 
nine, a relative of mine came limping down, on foot, to 
this town of Chatham. I call it this town, because if any- 
body present knows to a nicety where Rochester ends and 
Chatham begins, it is more than I do. He was a poor 
traveller, with not a farthing in his pocket. He sat by 
the fire in this very room, and he slept one night in a bed 
that will be occupied to-night by some one here. 

My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cav- 
alry regiment, if a cavalry regiment would have him ; if 
not, to take King George^s shilling from any corporal or 
sergeant who would put a bunch of ribbons in his hat. 
His object was to get shot ; but he thought he might as 
well ride to death as be at the trouble of walking. 

My relative’s Christian name was Richard, but he was 
better known as Dick. He dropped his own surname on 
the road down, and took up that of Doubledick. He was 
passed as Richard Doubledick ; age, twenty-two ; height, 
five foot ten ; native place. Exmouth, which he had never 
been near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chatham 
when he limped over the bridge here with half a shoe to 
his dusty foot, so he enlisted into a regiment of the line, 
and was glad to get drunk and forget all about it. 

You are to know that this relative of mine had gone 
wrong, and run wild. His heart was in the right place, 
but it was sealed up. He had been betrothed to a good 
and beautiful girl, whom he had loved better than she — 
or perhaps even he — believed; but in an evil hour he 
had given her cause to say to him solemnly, “Richard, I 
will never marry any other man. I will live single for 
your sake, but Mary Marshall’s lips” — her name was 
Mary Marshall — “never address another word to you 
on earth. Go, Richard I Heaven forgive you I ” This 
finished him. This brought him down to Chatham. This 
made him Private Richard Doubledick, with a determinar 
tion to be shot. 

There was not a more dissipated and reckless soldier 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


5!3 


ill Chatham barracks, in the year one thousand seven 
hundred and ninety-nine, than Private Eichard Double- 
dick. He associated with the dregs of every regiment ; 
he was as seldom sober as he could be, and was constant- 
ly under punishment. It became clear to the whole bar- 
racks that Private Eichard Doubledick would very soon 
be flogged. 

Now the Captain of Eichard Doubledick’s company was 
a young gentleman not above five years his senior, whose 
eyes had an expression in them which afiected Private 
Eichard Doubledick in a very remarkable way. They 
were bright, handsome, dark eyes, — what are called 
laughing eyes generally, and, when serious, rather steady 
than severe, — but they were the only eyes now left in 
his narrowed world that Private Eichard Doubledick could 
not stand. Unabashed by evil report and punishment, 
defiant of everything else and everybody else, he had but 
to know that those eyes looked at him for a moment, and 
he felt ashamed. He could not so much as salute Captain 
Taunton in the street like any other officer. He was re- 
proached and confused, — troubled by the mere possibil- 
ity of the captain’s looking at him. In his worst mo- 
ments, he would rather turn back, and go any distance 
out of his way, than encounter those two handsome, dark, 
bright eyes. 

One day, when Private Eichard Doubledick came out 
of the Black hole, where he had been passing the last 
eight-and-forty hours, and in which retreat he spent a 
good deal of his time, he was ordered to betake himself 
to Captain Taunton’s quarters. In the stale and squalid 
state of a man just out of the Black hole, he had less fan- 
cy than ever for being seen by the Captain ; but he was 
not so mad yet as to disobey orders, and consequently 
went up to the terrace overlooking the parade-ground, 
where the officers’ quarters were ; twisting and breaking 
m his hands, as he went along, a bit of the straw that 
had formed the decorative furniture of the Black hole. 

Come in ! ” cried the Captain, when he knocked with 
his knuckles at the door. Private Eichard Doubledick 
pulled off his cap, took a stride forward, and felt very 
conscious that he stood in the light of the dark, bright 
eyes. 


544 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


There was a silent pause. Private Richard Doubledick 
had put the straw in his mouth, and was gradually doub- 
ling it up into his windpipe and choking himself. 

‘‘ Doubledick, said the Captain, “ do you know where 
you are going to ? 

To the Devil, sir ? faltered Doubledick. 

Yes,^^ returned the Captain. “ And very fast.’^ 

Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the 
Black hole in his mouth, and made a miserable salute of 
acquiescence. 

“Doubledick,’’ said the Captain, “since I entered his 
Majesty’s service, a boy of seventeen, I have been pained 
to see many men of promise going that road ; but I have 
never been so pained to see a man determined to make 
the shameful journey as I have been, ever since you 
joined the regiment, to see you.” 

Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film steal- 
ing over the floor at which he looked ; also to find the 
legs of the Captain’s breakfast-table turning crooked, as 
if he saw them through water. 

“ I am only a common soldier, sir,” said he. “ It 
signifies very little what such a poor brute comes to.” 

“You are a man,” returned the Captain, with grave 
indignation, “ of education and supenor advantages ; and 
if you say that, meaning what you say, you have sunk 
lower than I had believed. How low that must be, 1 
leave you to consider ; knowing what I know of your 
disgrace, and seeing what I see.” 

“ I hope to get shot, soon, sir,” said Private Richard 
Doubledick ; “ and then the regiment and the world to- 
gether will be rid of me.” 

The legs of the table were becoming very crooked. 
Doubledick, looking up to steady his vision, met the eyes 
that had so strong an influence over him. He put his 
hand before his own eyes, and the breast of his disgrace- 
jacket swelled as if it would fly asunder. 

“ I would rather,” said the young Captain, “ see this 
in you. Doubledick, than I would see five thousand 
guineas counted out upon this table for a gift to my good 
mother. Have you a mother ? ” 

“ 1 am thankful to say she is dead, sir.” 

“ If your praises,” returned the Captain, “ were sound- 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


545 


ed from mouth to mouth through the whole regiment, 
through the whole army, through the whole country, you 
would wish she had lived to say, with pride and joy, ‘ He 
is my son 1 ^ 

'' Spare me, sir,’^ said Doubledick. “ She would never 
have heard any good of me. She would never have had 
any pride and joy in owning herself my mother. Love 
and compassion she might have had, and would have 
always had, I know ; but not — Spare me, sir ! I am 
a broken wretch, quite at your mercy ! ’’ And he turned 
his face to the wall, and stretched out his imploring hand. 

My friend — began the Captain. 

God bless you, sir I sobbed Private Eichard Doub- 
ledick. 

You are at the crisis of your fate. Hold your course 
unchanged a little longer, and you know what must hap- 
pen. I know even better than you can imagine, that, 
after that has happened, you are lost.. No man who could 
shed those tears could bear those marks. 

“ I fully believe it, sir,^^ in a low, shivering voice, said 
Private Richard Doubledick. 

But a man in any station can do his duty,^^ said the 
young Captain, and, in doing it, can earn his own re- 
spect, even if his case should be so very unfortunate and 
so very rare that he can earn no other man^s. A com- 
mon soldier, poor brute though you called him just now, 
has this advantage in the stormy times we live in, that 
he always does his duty before a host of sympathizing 
witnesses. Do you doubt that he may so do it as to be 
extolled through a whole regiment, through a whole army, 
through a whole country ? Turn while you may yet re- 
trieve the past, and try.’^ 

I will I I ask for only one witness, sir,’^ cried Rich- 
ard, with a bursting heart. 

“ I understand you. I will be a watchful and a faithful 
one.^^ 

I have heard from Private Richard Doubledick’s own 
lips, that he dropped down upon his knee, kissed that 
officer’s hand, arose, and went out of the light of the 
dark, bright eyes, an altered man. 

In that year, one thousand seven hundred and ninety- 
nine, the French were in Egypt, in Italy, in Germany, 


546 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


where not ? Napoleon Bonaparte had likewise begun to 
stir against us in India, and most men could read the’ 
signs of the great troubles that were coming on. In the 
very next year, when we formed an alliance with Austria 
against him, Captain Taunton’s regiment was on service 
in India. And there was not a finer non-commissioned 
officer in it — no, nor in the whole line — than Corporal 
Richard Doubledick. 

In eighteen hundred and one, the Indian army were on 
the coast of Egypt. Next year was the year of the proc- 
lamation of the short peace, and they were recalled. It 
had then become well known to thousands of men, that 
wherever Captain Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, 
led, there, close to him, ever at his side, firm as a rock, 
true as the sun, and brave as Mars, would be certain to 
be found, while life beat in their hearts, that famous sol- 
dier, Sergeant Richard Doubledick. 

Eighteen hundred and five, besides being the great 
year of Trafalgar, was a year of hard fighting in India. 
That year saw such wonders done by a Sergeant-Major, 
who cut his way single-handed through a solid mass of 
men, recovered the colors of his regiment, which had 
been seized from the hand of a poor boy shot through the 
heart, and rescued his wounded captain, who was down, 
and in a very jungle of horses’ hoofs and sabres, — saw 
such wonders done, I say, by this brave Sergeant-Major, 
that he was specially made the bearer of the colors he 
had won ; and Ensign Richard Doubledick had risen from 
the ranks. 

Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced 
by the bravest of men, — for the fame of following the 
old colors, shot through and through, which Ensign Rich- 
ard Doubledick had saved, inspired all breasts, — this 
regiment fought its way through the Peninsular war, 
up to the investment of Badajos in eighteen hundred and 
twelve. Again and again it had been cheered through 
the British ranks until the tears had sprung into men’s 
eyes at the mere hearing of the mighty British voice so 
exultant in their valor ; and there was not a drummer-boy 
but knew the legend, that wherever the two friends, 
Major Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, and Ensigp 
Richard Doubledick, who was devoted to him, were seen 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


o47 


to go, there the boldest spirits in the English army be- 
came wild to follow: 

One day, at Badajos, — not in the great storming, but 
in repelling a hot sally of the besieged upon our men at 
work in the trenches, who had given way, — the two 
officers found themselves hurrying forward, face to face, 
against a party of French infantry, who made a stand. 
There was an officer at their head, encouraging his men, 
— a courageous, handsome, gallant officer of five-and- 
thirty, whom Doubledick saw hurriedly, almost momen- 
tarily, but saw well. He particularly noticed this officer 
waving his sword, and rallying his men with an eager 
and excited cry, when they fired in obedience to his gest- 
ure, and Major Taunton dropped. 

It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick re- 
turned to the spot where he had laid the best friend man 
ever had on a coat spread upon the wet clay. Major 
Taunton^s uniform was opened at the breast, and on his 
shirt were three little spots of blood. 

“ Dear Doubledick, said he, I am dying.^^ 

For the love of Heaven, no I exclaimed the other, 
kneeling down beside him, and passing his arm round his 
neck to raise his head. Taunton I My preserver, my 
guardian angel, my witness ! Dearest, truest, kindest of 
human beings I Taunton I For God’s sake ! ” 

The bright, dark eyes — so very, very dark now, in 
the pale face — smiled upon him ; and the hand he had 
kissed thirteen years ago laid itself fondly on his breast. 

Write to my mother. You will see Home again. 
Tell her how we became friends. It will comfort her, as 
it comforts me.” 

He spoke no more, but faintly signed for a moment 
towards his hair as it fluttered in the wind. The Ensign 
understood him. He smiled again when he saw that, 
and, gently turning his face over on the supporting arm 
as if for rest, died, with his hand upon the breast in 
which he had revived a soul. 

No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard Doubledick that 
melancholy day. He buried his friend on the field, and 
became a lone, bereaved man. Beyond his duty he ap- 
peared to have but two remaining cares in life, — one, to 
preserve the little packet of hair he was to give to Taun 


548 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


ton^s mother ; the other, to encounter that French oflScer 
who had rallied the men under whose fire Taunton fell. 
A new legend now began to circulate among our troops ; 
and it was, that when he and the French oflScer came face 
to face once more, there would be weeping in France. 

The war went on — and through it went the exact pic- 
ture of the French officer on the one side, and the bodily 
reality upon the other — until the Battle of Toulouse was 
fought. In the returns sent home appeared these words ; 
“ Severely wounded, but not dangerously, Lieutenant 
Richard Doubledick. 

At Midsummer-time in the year eighteen hundred and 
fourteen. Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, now a browned 
soldier, seven-and-thirty years of age, came home to Eng- 
land invalided. He brought the hair with him, near his 
heart. Many a French officer had he seen, since that 
day ; many a dreadful night, in searching with men and 
lanterns for his wounded, had he relieved French officers 
lying disabled ; but the mental picture and the reality had 
never come together. 

Though he was weak and suffered pain, he lost not an 
hour in getting down to Frome in Somersetshire, where 
Taunton’s mother lived. In the sweet, compassionate 
words that naturally present themselves to the mind to- 
night, “he was the only son of his mother, and she was 
a widow.” 

It was a Sunday evening, and the lady sat at her quiet 
garden-window, reading the Bible ; reading to herself, in 
a trembling voice, that very passage in it, as I have heard 
him tell. He heard the words, “ Young man, I say unto 
thee, arise I ” 

He had to pass the window ; and the bright, dark eyes 
of his debased time seemed to look at him. Her heart 
told her who he was ; she came to the door quickly, and 
fell upon his neck. 

“ He saved me from ruin, made me a human creature, 
won me from infamy and shame. 0, God forever bless 
him 1 As He will. He will I ” 

“ He will ! ” the lady answered. “ I know he is in 
Heaven ! ” Then she piteously cried, “ But oh, my dar- 
ling boy, mj'- darling boy I ” 

Never from the hour when Private Richard Doubledick 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


549 


enlisted at Chatham had the Private, Corporal, Sergeant, 
Sergeant-Major, Ensign, or Lieutenant breathed his right 
name, or the name of Mary Marshall, or a word of the 
story of his life, into any ear except his reclaimer’s. That 
previous scene in his existence was closed. He had firm- 
ly resolved that his expiation should be to live unknown ; 
to disturb no more the peace that had long grown over 
his old offences ; to let it be revealed, when he was dead, 
that he had striven and suffered, and had never forgotten; 
and then, if they could forgive him and believe him — 
well, it would be time enough — time enough I 

But that night, remembering the words he had cher- 
ished for two years, “ Tell her how we became friends. 
It will comfort her, as it comforts me,” he related every- 
thing. It gradually seemed to him as if in his maturity 
he had recovered a mother ; it gradually seemed to her 
as if in her bereavement she had found a son. During his 
stay in England, the quiet garden into which he had slowly 
and painfully crept, a stranger, became the boundary of 
his home ; when he was able to rejoin his regiment in the 
spring, he left the garden, thinking was this indeed the 
first time he had ever turned his face towards the old 
colors with a woman’s blessing I 

He followed them — so ragged, so scarred and pierced 
now, that they would scarcely hold together — to Quatre 
Bras and Ligny. He stood beside them, in an awful still- 
ness of many men, shadowy through the mist and drizzle 
of a wet June forenoon, on the field of Waterloo. And 
down to that hour the picture in his mind of the French 
officer had never been compared with the reality. 

The famous regiment was in action early in the battle, 
and received its first check in many an eventful year, 
when he was seen to fall. But it swept on to avenge 
him, and left behind it no such creature in the world of 
consciousness as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. 

Through pits of mire, and pools of rain ; along deep 
ditches, once roads, that were pounded and ploughed to 
pieces by artillery, heavy wagons, tramp of men and 
horses, and the struggle of every wheeled thing that 
could carry wounded soldiers ; jolted among the dying 
and the dead, so disfigured by blood and mud as to be 
hardly recognizable for humanity ; undisturbed by the 


550 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


moaning of men and the shrieking of horses, which, 
newly taken from the peaceful pursuits of life, could not 
endure the sight of the stragglers lying by the wayside, 
never to resume their toilsome journey ; dead, as to any 
sentient life that was in it, and yet alive, — the form that 
had been Lieutenant Kichard Doubledick, with whose 
praises England rang, was conveyed to Brussels. There 
it was tenderly laid down in hospital ; and there it lay, 
week after week, through the long bright summer days, 
until the harvest, spared by war, had ripened and was 
gathered in. 

Over and over again the sun rose and set upon the 
crowded city ; over and over again the moonlight nights 
were quiet on the plains of Waterloo ; and all that time 
was a blank to what had been Lieutenant Kichard Double- 
dick. Rejoicing troops marched into Brussels, and 
marched out ; brothers and fathers, sisters, mothers, and 
wives, came thronging thither, drew their lots of joy or 
agony, and departed ; so many times a day the bells 
rang ; so many times the shadows of the great buildings 
changed ; so many lights sprang up at dusk ; so many 
feet passed here and there upon the pavements ; so many 
hours of sleep and cooler air of night succeeded ; indiffer- 
ent to all, a marble face lay on a bed, like the face of a 
recumbent statue on the tomb of Lieutenant Kichard 
Doubledick. 

Slowly laboring, at last, through a long heavy dream 
of confused time and place, presenting faint glimpses of 
army surgeons whom he knew, and of faces that had been 
familiar to his youth, — dearest and kindest among them, 
Mary MarshalBs, with a solicitude upon it more like 
reality than anything he could discern, — Lieutenant 
Kichard Doubledick came back to life. To the beautiful 
life of a calm autumn evening sunset, to the peaceful life 
of a fresh quiet room with a large window standing open ; 
a balcony beyond, in which were moving leaves and 
sweet-smelling flowers ; beyond, again, the clear sky, 
with the sun full in his sight, pouring its golden radiance 
v>n his bed. 

It was so tranquil and so lovely that he thought he had 
passed into another world. And he said in a faint voice, 
“ Taunton, are you near me ? 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


551 


A face bent over him. Not his, his mother’s. 

I came to nurse you. We have nursed you many 
weeks. You were moved here long ago. Do you remem- 
ber nothing ? ” 

Nothing.” 

The lady kissed his cheek, and held his hand, soothing 
him. 

Where is the regiment ? What has happened ? Let 
me call you mother. What has happened, mother ? ” 

“ A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regi- 
ment was the bravest in the field.” 

His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the 
tears ran down his face. He was very weak, too weak 
to move his hand. 

Was it dark just now ? ” he asked presently. 

^^No.” 

It was only dark to me ? Something passed away, 
like a black shadow. But as it went, and the sun — 0 
the blessed sun, how beautiful it is ! — touched my face, 
I thought I saw a light white cloud pass out at the door. 
Was there nothing that went out ? ” 

She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, 
she still holding his hand, and soothing him. 

From that time he recovered. Slowly, for he had been 
desperately wounded in the head, and had been shot in 
the body, but making some little advance every day. 
When he had gained sufficient strength to converse as he 
lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton 
always brought him back to his own history. Then he 
recalled his preserver’s dying words, and thought, It 
comforts her.” 

One day he awoke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked 
her to read to him. But the curtain of the bed, softening 
the light, which she always drew back when he awoke, 
that she might see him from her table at the bedside 
where she sat at work, was held undrawn ; and a wo- 
man’s voice spoke, which was not hers. 

“ Can you bear to see a stranger ? ” it said softly. 
“Will you like to see a stranger ? ” 

“ Stranger ! ” he repeated. The voice awoke old 
memories, before the days of Private Kichard Doubledick. 

“ A stranger now, but not a stranger once,” it said in 


552 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


tones that thrilled him. “ Richard, dear Richard, lost 
through so many years, my name — ’’ 

He cried out her name, Mary,^^ and she held him in 
her arms, and his head lay on her bosom. 

I am not breaking a rash vow, Richard. These are 
not Mary MarshalPs lips that speak. I have another 
name.^^ 

She was married. 

I have another name, Richard. Did you ever hear 
it?^^ 

Never I 

He looked into her face, so pensively beautiful, and 
wondered at the smile upon it through her tears. 

Think again, Richard. Are you sure you never 
heard my altered name ? 

“ Never I ’’ 

** Don’t move your head to look at me, dear Richard. 
Let it lie here, while I tell my story. I loved a generous, 
noble man ; loved him with my whole heart ; loved him 
for years and years ; loved him faithfully, devotedly ; 
loved him with no hope of return ; loved him, knowing 
nothing of his highest qualities, — not even knowing that 
he was alive. He was a brave soldier. He was honored 
and beloved by thousands of thousands, when the mother 
of his dear friend found me, and showed me that in all his 
triumphs he had never forgotten me. He was wounded in 
a great battle. He was brought, dying, here, into Brussels. 
I came to watch and tend him, as I would have joyfully 
gone, with such a purpose, to the dreariest ends of the 
earth. When he knew no one else, he knew me. When 
he suffered most, he bore his sufferings barely murmur- 
ing, content to rest his head where yours rests now. 
When he lay at the point of death, he married me, that 
he might call me Wife before he died. And the name, 
my dear love, that I took on that forgotten night — ” 

I know it now ! ” he sobbed. The shadowy re- 
membrance strengthens. It is come back. I thank 
Heaven that my mind is quite restoi-ed ! My Mary, kiss 
me ; lull this weary head to rest,, or I shall die of grati- 
tude. His parting words are fulfilled. I see Home 
again I ” 

Well ! They were happy. It was a long recovery, 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


553 


but they were happy through it all. The sno-w had 
melted on the ground, and the birds were singing in the 
leafless thickets of the early spring, when those three 
were first able to ride out together, and when people 
flocked about the open carriage to cheer and congratulate 
Captain Eichard Doubledick. 

But even then it became necessary for the Captain, in- 
stead of returning to England, to complete his recov- 
ery in the climate of Southern France. They found a 
spot upon the Rhone, within a ride of the old town of 
Avignon, and within view of its broken bridge, which 
was all they could desire ; they lived there together six 
months ; then returned to England. Mts. Taunton, grow- 
ing old after three years, — though not so old as that her 
bright, dark eyes were dimmed, — and remembering that 
her strength had been benefited by the change, resolved 
to go back for a year to those parts. So she went with 
a faithful servant, who had often carried her son in his 
arms ; and she was to be rejoined and escorted home, at 
the year’s end, by Captain Richard Doubledick. 

She wrote regularly to her children (as she called them 
now), and they to her. She went to the neighborhood 
of Aix ; and there, in their own chateau near the farmer's 
house she rented, she grew into intimacy with a family 
belonging to that part of France. The intimacy began 
in her often meeting among the vineyards a pretty child, 
a girl with a most compassionate heart, who was never 
tired of listening to the solitary English lady’s stories of 
her poor son and the cruel wars. The family were as 
gentle as the child, and at length she came to know them 
so well that she accepted their invitation to pass the last 
month of her residence abroad under their roof. All this 
intelligence she wrote home, piecemeal as it came about, 
from time to time ; and at last enclosed a polite note from 
the head of the chateau, soliciting, on the occasion of his 
approaching mission to that neighborhood, the honor of 
the company of cet homme si justement cdl^bre, Monsieur 
lo Capitaine Richard Doubledick. 

Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in 
the full vigor of life, broader across the chest and shoul- 
ders than he had ever been before, despatched a courte- 
ous reply, and followed it in person. Travelling through 


554 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


all that extent of country after three years of Peace, he 
blessed the better days on which the world had fallen. 
The corn was golden, not drenched in unnatural red ; 
was bound in sheaves for food, not trodden underfoot by 
men in mortal fight. The smoke rose up from peaceful 
hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts were laden with 
the fair fruits of the earth, not with wounds and death. 
To him who had so often seen the terrible reverse, these 
things were beautiful indeed ; and they brought him in a 
softened spirit to the old chateau near Aix upon a deep, 
blue evening. 

It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, 
with round towers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden 
roof, and more windows than Aladdin’s Palace. The 
lattice blinds were all thrown open, after the heat of the 
day, and there were glimpses of rambling walls and cor- 
ridors within. Then there were immense outbuildings 
fallen into partial decay, masses of dark trees, terrace- 
gardens, balustrades ; tanks of water, too weak to play 
and too dirty to work ; statues, weeds, and thickets of 
iron railing that seemed to have over-grown themselves 
like the shrubberies, and to have branched out in all man- 
ner of wild shapes. The entrance doors stood open, as 
doors often do in that country when the heat of the day 
is past ; and the Captain saw no bell or knocker, and 
walked in. 

He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool 
and gloomy after the glare of a Southern day’s travel. 
Extending along the four sides of this hall was a gallery, 
leading to suites of rooms ; and it was lighted from the 
top. Still no bell was to be seen. 

Faith,” said the Captain, halting, ashamed of the 
clanking of his boots, this is a ghostly beginning I ” 

He started back, and felt his face turn white. In the 
gallery, looking down at him, stood the French officer, — 
the officer whose picture he had carried in his mind so 
long and so far. Compared with the original, at last, — - 
in every lineament how like it w^s I 

He moved and disappeared, and Captain Richard Double- 
dick heard his steps coming quickly down into the hall. 
He entered through an archway. There was a bright, 
sudden look upon his face, much such a look as it had 
worn in that fatal moment. 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


55y 


Monsieur le Oapitaine Kichard Doubledick? Enchanted 
to receive him I A thousand apologies I The servants 
were all out in the air. There was a little fete among 
them in the garden. In effect, it was the fete-day of my 
daughter, the little cherished and protected of Madame 
Taunton. 

He was so gracious and so frank that Monsieur le Cap- 
itaine Richard Doubledick could not withhold his hand. 

It is the hand of a brave Englishman,^^ said the French 
officer, retaining it while he spoke. I could respect a 
brave Englishman, even as my foe, how much more as 
my friend I I also am a soldier. 

He has not remembered me as I have remembered 
him ; he did not take such note of my face, that day, as 
I took of his,^^ thpught Captain Richard Doubledick. 

How shall I tell him ? '' 

The French officer conducted his guest into a garden, 
and presented him to his wife, an engaging and beautiful 
woman, sitting with Mrs. Taunton in a "whimsical old- 
fashioned pavilion. His daughter, her fair young face 
beaming with joy, came running to embrace him ; and 
there was a boy-baby to tumble down among the orange- 
trees on the broad steps, in making for his father’s legs. 
A multitude of children visitors were dancing to sprightly 
music ; and all the servants and peasants about the cha- 
teau were dancing too. It was a scene of innocent hap- 
piness that might have been invented for the climax of 
the scenes of Peace which had soothed the Captain’s 
journey. 

He looked on, greatly troubled in his mind, until a 
resounding bell rang, and the French officer begged to 
show him his rooms. They went up stairs into the gal- 
lery from which the officer had looked down ; and Mon- 
sieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick was cordially 
welcomed to a grand outer chamber, and a smaller one 
within, all clocks, and draperies, and hearths, and brazen 
dogs, and tiles, and cool devices, and elegance, and vast- 
ness. 

You were at Waterloo,” said the French officer. 

“ I was,” said Captain Richard Doubledick. “ And at 
Badajos.” 

Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his 


556 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


ears, he sat down to consider, What shall I do, and how 
shall I tell him ? At that time, unhappily, many deplor- 
able duels had been fought between English and French 
officers, arising out of the recent war ; and these duels, 
and how to avoid this officer’s hospitality, were the up- 
permost thought in Captain Richard Doubledick’s mind. 

Tie was thinking, and letting the time run out in which 
he should have dressed for dinner, when Mrs. Taunton 
spoke to him outside the door, asking if he could give her 
the letter he had brought from Mary. His mother, 
above all,” the Captain thought. How shall I tell 
her? ” 

'‘You will form a friendship with your host, I hope,” 
said Mrs. Taunton, whom he hurriedly admitted, “ that 
will last for life. He is so true-hearted and so generous, 
Richard, that you can hardly fail to esteem one another. 
If He had been spared,” she kissed (not without tears) 
the locket in which she wore his hair, “ he would have 
appreciated him with his own magnanimitj’^, and would 
have been truly happy that the evil days were past which 
made such a man his enemy.” 

She left the room ; and the Captain walked, first to one 
window, whence he could see the dancing in the garden, 
then to another window, whence he could see the smiling 
prospect and the peaceful vineyards. 

“Spirit of my departed friend,” said he, “is it through 
thee these better thoughts are rising in my mind ? Is it 
thou who hast shown me, all the way I have been drawn 
to meet this man, the blessings of the altered time ? Is it 
thou who has sent thy stricken mother to me to stay my 
angry hand ? Is it from thee the whisper comes, that 
this man did his duty as thou didst, — and as I did, 
through thy guidance, which has wholly saved me here 
on earth, — and that he did no more ? ” 

He sat down, with his head buried in his hands, and, 
when he rose up, made the second strong resolution of his 
life, — that neither to the French officer, nor to the mother 
of his departed friend, nor to any soul, while either of the 
two was living, would he breathe what only he knew. 
And when he touched that French officer’s glass with his 
own, that day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in the 
name of the Divine Forgiver of injuries. 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


557 


Here I ended my story as the first Poor Traveller 
But, if I had told it now, I could have added that the 
time has since come when the son of Major Richard 
Doubledick, and the son of that French officer, friends as 
their fathers were before them, fought side by side in 
one cause, with their respective nations, like long-divided 
brothers whom the better times have brought together, 
fast united. 


558 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


CHAPTER HL 

THE ROAD. 

My story being finished, and the Wassail too, we broke 
up as the Cathedral bell struck Twelye. I did not take 
leave of my Travellers that night ; for it had come into 
my head to reappear, in conjunction with some hot coffee, 
at seven in the morning. 

As I passed along the High Street, I heard the Waits 
at a distance, and struck off to find them. They were 
playing near one of the old gates of the City, at the cor- 
ner of a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick tenements, 
which the clarionet obligingly informed me were inhabited 
by the Minor-Canons. They had odd little porches over 
the doors, like sounding-boards over old pulpits ; and I 
thought I should like to see one of the Minor-Canons 
come out upon his top step, and favor us with a little 
Christmas discourse about the poor scholars of Rochester ; 
taking for his text the words of his Master, relative to the 
devouring of Widows^ houses. 

The clarionet was so communicative, and my inclina- 
tions were (as they generally are) of so vagabond a ten- 
dency, that I accompanied the Waits across an open 
green called the Vines, and assisted- — in the French 
sense — at the performance of two waltzes, two polkas, 
and three Irish melodies, before I thought of my inn any 
more. However, I returned to it then, and found a fiddle 
in the kitchen, and Ben, the wall-eyed young man, and 
two chambermaids, circling round the great deal table 
with the utmost animation. 

1 had a very bad night. It cannot have been owing to 
the turkey or the beef, — and the Wassail is out of the 
question, — but in every endeavor that I made to get to 
sleep I failed most dismally. I was never asleep ; and in 
whatsoever unreasonable direction my mind rambled, the 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


55S 


effig*y of Master Kichard Watts perpetually embarrassed 
it. 

In a word, I only got out of the worshipful Master 
Richard Wattses way by getting out of bed in the dark at 
six o^clock, and tumbling, as my custom is, into all the 
cold water that could be accumulated for the purpose. 
The outer air was dull and cold enough in the street, 
when I came down there ; and the one candle in our sup- 
per-room at Watts’s Charity looked as pale in the burn- 
ing as if it had had a bad night too. But my Travellers 
had all slept soundly, and they took to the hot coffee, 
and the piles of bread and butter, which Ben had arranged 
like deals in a timber-yard, as kindly as I could desire. 

While it was yet scarcely daylight, we all came out 
into the street together, and there shook hands. The 
widow took the little sailor towards Chatham, where he 
was to find a steamboat for Sheerness ; the lawyer, with 
an extremely knowing look, went his own way, without 
committing himself by announcing his intentions ; two 
more struck off by the cathedral and old castle for Maid- 
stone ; and the book-pedler accompanied me over the 
bridge. As for me, I was going to walk by Cobham 
Woods, as far upon my way to London as I fancied. 

When I came to the stile and footpath by which I was 
to diverge from the main road, I bade farewell to my last 
remaining Poor Traveller, and pursued my way alone. 
And now the mists began to rise in the most beautiful 
manner, and the sun to shine ; and as I went on through 
the bracing air, seeing the hoar-frost sparkle everywhere, 
I felt as if all Nature shared in the joy of the great Birth- 
day. 

Going through the woods, the softness of my tread 
upon the mossy ground and among the brown leaves 
enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt sur- 
rounded. As the whitened stems environed me, I thought 
how the Founder of the time had never raised his benig- 
nant hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of 
one unconscious tree By Cobham Hall, I came to the 
village, and the churchyard where the dead had been 
quietly buried, in the sure and certain hope ” which 
Christmas time inspired. What children could I see at 
play, and not be loving of, recalling who had loved them I 


560 


THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 


No garden that I passed was out of unison with the day, 
for I remembered that the tomb was in a garden, and 
that “ she, supposing him to be the gardener,^’ had said, 

Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou 
hast laid him, and I will take him away/^ In time, the 
distant river with the ships came full in view, and with 
it pictures of the poor fishermen, mending their nets, who 
arose and followed him, — of the teaching of the people 
from a ship pushed oft' a little way from shore, by reason 
of the multitude, — of a majestic figure walking on the 
water, in the loneliness of night. My very shadow on 
the ground was eloquent of Christmas ; for did not the 
people lay their sick where the mere shadows of the men 
who had heard and seen him might fall as they passed 
along ? 

Thus Christmas begirt me, far and near, until I had 
come to Blackheath, and had walked down the long vista 
of gnarled old trees in Greenwich Park, and was being 
steam-rattled through the mists now closing in once more, 
towards the lights of London. Brightly they shone, but 
not so brightly as my own fire, and the brighter faces 
around it, when we came together to celebrate the day. 
And there I told of worthy Master Eichard Watts, and of 
my supper with the Six Poor Travellers who were neither 
Rogues nor Proctors, and from that hour to this I have 
never seen one of them again. 


THE HOLLY-TREE 


THREE BRANCHES. 


FIRST BRANCH. 

MYSELF. 

I HAVE kept one secret in the course of my life. I am 
a bashful man. Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever 
does suppose it, nobody ever did suppose it, but I am 
naturally a bashful man. This is the secret which I have 
never breathed until now. 

I might greatly move the reader by some account of 
the innumerable places I have not been to, the innumer- 
able people I have not called upon or received, the in- 
numerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solely 
because I am by original constitution and character a 
bashful man. But I will leave the reader unmoved, and 
proceed with the object before me. 

That object is to give a plain account of my travels and 
discoveries in the Holly-Tree Inn ; in which place of good 
entertainment for man and beast I was once snowed up. 

It happened in the memorable year when I parted for- 
ever from Angela Leath, whom I was shortly to have 
married, on making the discovery that she preferred my 
bosom friend. From our school-days I had freely admit- 
ted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; 
and, though I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the 
preference to be natural, and tried to forgive them both. 
It was under these circumstances that I resolved to go to 
America — on my way to the Devil. 

Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to 
Edwin, but resolving to write each of them an affecting 
letter conveying my blessing and forgiveness, which the 
steam-tender for shore should carry to the post when I 
myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond 


;562 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


recall, — I say, locking up my grief in my own breast, 
and consoling myself as I could with the prospect of be- 
ing generous, I quietly left all I held dear, and started on 
the desolate journey I have mentioned. 

The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left 
my chambers forever at five o^clock in the morning. I 
had shaved by candle-light, of course, and was miserably 
cold, and experienced that general all-pervading sensa- 
tion of getting up to be hanged which I have usually 
found inseparable from untimely rising under such cir- 
cumstances. 

How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street 
when I came out of the Temple ! The street-lamps dick- 
ering in the gusty northeast wind, as if the very gas were 
contorted with cold ; the white-topped houses ; the bleak, 
star-lighted sky ; the market people and other early strag- 
glers, trotting, to circulate their almost frozen blood the 
hospitable light and warmth of the few coffee-shops and 
public-houses that were open for such customers ; the 
hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged 
(the wind had already beaten it into every crevice), and 
which lashed my face like a steel whip. 

It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end 
of the year. The Post-office packet for the United States 
was to depart from Liverpool, weather permitting, on the 
first of the ensuing month, and I had the intervening time 
on my hands. I had taken this into consideration, and 
had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I 
need not name) on the farther borders of Yorkshire. It 
was endeared to me by my having first seen Angela at a 
farm-house in that place, and my melancholy was gratified 
by the idea of taking a wintry leave of it before my ex- 
patriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid being 
sought out before my resolution should have been ren- 
dered irrevocable by being carried into full effect, I had 
written to Angela overnight, in my usual manner, lament- 
ing that urgent business — of which she should know all 
particulars by and by — took me unexpectedly away from 
her for a week or ten days. 

There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its 
place there were stage-coaches ; which I occasionally 
find myself, in common with some other people, affecting 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


563 


to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as a very 
serious penance then. I had secured the box-seat on the 
fastest of these, and iny business in Fleet Street was to 
get into a cab with my portmanteau, so to make the best 
of my way to the Peacock at Islington, where I was to 
join this coach. But when one of our Temple watchmen, 
who carried my portmanteau into Fleet Street for me, 
told me about the huge blocks of ice that had for some 
days past been floating in the river, having closed up in 
the night, and made a walk from the Temple Gardens 
over to the Surrey shore, I began to ask myself the 
question, whether the box-seat would not be likely to put 
a sudden and a frosty end to my unhappiness. I was 
heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so far 
gone as to wish to be frozen to death. 

When I got up to the Peacock, — where I found every- 
body drinking hot purl, in self-preservation, — I asked if 
there were an inside seat to spare. I then discovered 
that, inside or out, I was the only passenger. This gave 
me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of the 
weather, since that coach always loaded particularly well. 
However, I took a little purl (which I found uncommonly 
good), and got into the coach. When I was seated, they 
built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of 
making a rather ridiculous appearance, I began mv 
journey. 

It was still dark when we left the Peacock. For a lit- 
tle while, pale, uncertain ghosts of houses and trees ap- 
peared and vanished, and then it was hard, black, frozen 
day. People were lighting their fires ; smoke was mount- 
ing straight up high into the rarefied air ; and we were 
rattling for High gate Archway over the hardest ground I 
have ever heard the ring of iron shoes on. As we got 
into the country, everything seemed to have grown old 
and gray. The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cot- 
tages and homesteads, the ricks in farmer^s yards. Out- 
door work was abandoned, horse-troughs at roadside inns 
were frozen hard, no stragglers lounged about, doors 
were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires 
inside, and children (even turnpike people have children, 
and seem to like them) rubbed the frost from the little 
panes of glass with their chubby arms, that their bright 


564 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary coach going 
by. I don’t know when the snow began to set in ; but I 
know that we were changing horses somewhere when 1 
heard the guard remark, “ That the old lady up in the 
sky was picking her geese pretty hard to-day.” Then, 
indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick. 

The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely 
traveller does. I was warm and valiant after eating and 
drinking, — particularly after dinner ; cold and depressed 
at all other times. I was always bewildered as to time 
and place, and always more or less out of my senses. 
The coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld 
Lang Syne, without a moment’s intermission. They kept 
the time and tune with the greatest regularity, and rose 
into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, with a 
precision that worried me to death. While we changed 
horses, the guard and coachman went stumping up and 
down the road, printing off their shoes in the snow, and 
poured so much liquid consolation into themselves with- 
out being any the worse for it, that I began to confound 
them, as it darkened again, with two great white casks 
standing on end. Our horses tumbled down in solitary 
places, and we got them up, — which was the pleasantest 
variety I had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and 
snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing. 
All night long, we went on in this manner. Thus we 
came round the clock, upon the Great North Road, to the 
performance of Auld Lang Syne by day again. And it 
snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left 
off snowing. 

I forget now where we were at noon on the second 
day, and where we ought to have been ; but I know that 
we were scores of miles behindhand, and that our case 
was growing worse every hour. The drift was becoming 
prodigiously deep ; landmarks were getting snowed out ; 
the road and the fields were all one ; instead of having 
fences and hedge-rows to guide us, we went crunching 
on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that might 
sink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole 
hillside. Still the coachman and guard — who kept to- 
gether on the box, always in council, and looking well 
about them — made out the track with astonishing sa- 
gacity. 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


565 


When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to my 
fancy, like a large drawing on a slate, with abundance 
of slate-pencil expended on the churches and houses 
where the snow lay thickest. When we came within a 
town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial- 
faces choked with snow, and the Inn-signs blotted out, it 
seemed as if the whole place were overgrown with white 
moss. As to the coach, it was a mere snowball ; similar- 
ly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the 
town^s end, turning our clogged wheels and encouraging 
our horses, were men and boys of snow ; and the bleak 
wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us was a 
snowy Sahara. One would have thought this enough ; 
notwithstanding which, I pledge my word that it snowed 
and snowed, and still it snowed, aud never left off snow- 
ing. 

We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing 
nothing, out of towns and villages, but the track of stoats, 
hares, and foxes, and sometimes of birds. At nine o^clock 
at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst from our 
horn, and a welcome sound of talking, with a glimmering 
and moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy 
state. I found that we were going to change. 

They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare 
head became as white as King Learns in a single minute, 
“ What Inn is this ? 

The Holly-Tree, sir,^^ said he. 

Upon my word, I believe,’^ said I, apologetically, to 
the guard and coachman, that I must stop here.^^ 

Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and 
the postboy, and all the stable authorities, had already 
asked the coachman, to the wide-eyed interest of all the 
rest of the establishment, if he meant to go on. The 
coachman had already replied, '' Yes, he M take her 
through it, — meaning by Her the coach, — “if so be 
as George would stand by him.^^ George was the guard, 
and he had already sworn that he would stand by him. 
So the helpers were already getting the horses out. 

My declaring myself beaten, after this parley, was not 
an announcement without preparation. Indeed, but foi 
the way to the announcement being smoothed by the par- 
ley, I more than doubt whether, as an innately bashful 


566 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


man, I should have had the confidence to make it. Aa 
it was, it received the approval even of the guard and 
coachman. Therefore, with many confirmations of my 
inclining, and many remarks from one by-stander to an- 
other, that the gentleman could go forward by the mail 
to-morrow, whereas to-night he would only be froze, and 
where was the good of a gentleman being froze, — ah, 
let alone buried alive (which latter clause was added by 
a humorous helper as a joke at my expense, and was ex- 
tremely well received), I saw my portmanteau got out 
stiff, like a frozen body ; did the handsome thing by the 
guard and coachman ; wished them good night and a 
prosperous journey ; and, a little ashamed of myself, after 
all, for leaving them to fight it out alone, followed the 
landlord, landlady, and waiter of the Holly-Tree up stairs. 

I thought I had never seen such a large room as that 
into which they showed me. It had five windows, with 
dark red curtains that would have absorbed the light of a 
general illumination ; and there were complications of 
drapery at the top of the curtains, that went wandering 
about the wall in a most extraordinary manner. I asked 
for a smaller room, and they told me there was no smaller 
room. They could screen me in, however, the landlord 
said. They brought a great old japanned screen, with 
natives (Japanese, I suppose) engaged in a variety of 
idiotic pursuits all over it ; and left me roasting whole 
before an immense fire. 

My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off, up a great 
staircase, at the end of a long gallery ; and nobDdy knows 
what a misery this is to a bashful man who would rather 
not meet people on the stairs. It was the grimmest room 
I have ever had the nightmare in ; and all the furniture, 
from the four posts of the bed to the two old silver can- 
dlesticks, was tall, high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted. 
Below, in my sitting-room, if I looked round my screen, 
the wind rushed at me like a mad bull ; if I stuck to my 
arm-chair, the fire scorched me to the color of a new 
brick. The chimney-piece was very high, and there was 
a bad glass — what 1 may call a wavy glass — above it, 
which, when I stood up, just showed me my anterioi 
phrenological developments, — and these never look well, 
in any subject, cut short off at the eyebrow. If I stood 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


567 


with my back to the fire, a gloomy vault of darkness 
above and beyond the screen insisted on being looked at ; 
and, ill its dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten curtains 
of the five windows went twisting and creeping about, 
like a nest of gigantic worms. 

I suppose that what I observe in myself must be ob- 
served by some other men of similar character in theifn' 
selves ; therefore I am emboldened to mention, that, when 
1 travel, I never arrive at a place but I immediately want 
to go away from it. Before I had finished my supper of 
broiled fowl and mulled port, I had impressed upon the 
waiter in detail my arrangements for departure in the 
morning. Breakfast and bill at eight. Fly at nine. Two 
horses, or, if needful, even four. 

Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week 
long. In oases of nightmare, I thought of Angela, and 
felt more depressed than ever by the reflection that I was 
on the shortest road to Gretna Green. What had I to do 
with Gretna Green ? I was not going that way to the 
Devil, but by the American route, I remarked, in my 
bitterness. 

In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that 
it had snowed all night, and that I was snowed up. 
Nothing could get out of that spot on the moor, or could 
come at it, until the road had been cut out by laborers 
from the market-town. When they might cut their way 
to the Holly-Tree, nobody could tell me. 

It was now Christmas eve. I should have had a dis- 
mal Christmas-time of it anywhere, and consequently that 
did not so much matter ; still, being snowed up was, like 
dying of frost, a thing I had not bargained for. I felt 
very lonely. Yet I could no more have proposed to the 
landlord and landlady to admit me to their society (though 
I should have liked it very much), than I could have 
asked them to present me with a piece of plate. Here 
my great secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is 
to be observed. Like most bashful men, I judge of other 
people as if they were bashful too. Besides being far 
too shamefaced to make the proposal myself, I really had 
a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last degree 
disconcerting to them. 

Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first 


568 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


of all asked what books there were in the house. The 
waiter brought me a Book of Roads, two or three old 
Newspapers, a little Song-Book terminating in a collection 
of Toasts and Sentiments, a little Jest-Book, an odd vol- 
ume of Peregrine Pickle, and the Sentimental Journey. 1 
knew every word of the two last already, but I read them 
through again, then tried to hum all the songs (Auld 
Lang Sjme was among them) ; went entirely through the 
jokes, — in which I found a fund of melancholy adapted 
to my state of mind ; proposed all the toasts, enunciated 
all the sentiments, and mastered the papers. The latter 
had nothing in them but Stock advertisements, a meeting 
about a county rate, and a highway robbery. As I am 
a greedy reader, I could not make this supply hold out 
until night ; it was exhausted by tea-time. Being then 
entirely cast upon my own resources, I got through an 
hour in considering what to do next. Ultimately, it came 
into my head (from which I was anxious by any means 
to exclude Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavor to 
recall my experience of Inns, and would try how long it 
lasted me. I stirred the fire, moved my chair a little to 
one side of the screen, — not daring to go far, for I knew 
the wind was waiting to make a rush at me, I could hear 
it growling, — and began. 

My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery ; 
consequently, I went back to the Nursery for a starting- 
point, and found myself at the knee of a sallow woman 
with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, and a green gown, 
whose specialty was a dismal narrative of a landlord by 
the roadside, whose visitors unaccountably disappeared 
for many years, until it was discovered that the pursuit 
of his life had been to convert them into pies. For the 
better devotion of himself to this branch of industry, he 
had constructed a secret door behind the head of the bed ; 
and when the visitor (oppressed with pie), had fallen 
asleep, this wicked landlord would look softly in with a 
lamp in one hand and a knife in the other, would cut his 
throat, and would make him into pies ; for which purpose 
he had coppers underneath a trap-door, always boiling ; 
and rolled out his pastry in the dead of the night. Yet 
even he was not insensible to the stings of conscience, 
for he never went to sleep without being heard to mutter, 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


569 


Too much pepper I which was eventually the cause 
of his being brought to justice. I had no sooner dis- 
posed of this criminal than there started up another, of 
the same period, whose profession was originally house- 
breaking ; in the pursuit of which art he had had his right 
ear chopped off one night, as he was burglariously getting 
in at a window, by a brave and lovely servant-maid (whom 
the aquiline-nosed woman, though not at all answering 
the description, always mysteriously implied to be her- 
self). After several years, this brave and lovely servant- 
maid was married to the landlord of a country Inn ; which 
landlord had this remarkable characteristic, that he al- 
ways wore a silk nightcap, and never would on any con- 
sideration take it off. At last, one night, when he was 
fast asleep, the brave and lovely woman lifted up his silk 
nightcap on the right side, and found that he had no ear 
there ; upon which she sagaciously perceived that he was 
the clipped housebreaker, who had married her with the 
intention of putting her to death. She immediately heated 
the poker and terminated his career, for which she was 
taken to King George upon his throne, and received the 
compliments of royalty on her great discretion and valor, 
This same narrator, who had a Ghoulish pleasure, I have 
long been persuaded, in terrifying me to the utmost con 
fines of my reason, had another authentic anecdote within 
her own experience, founded, I now believe, upon Kay- 
mond and Agnes, or the Bleeding Nun. She said it hap- 
pened to her brother-in-law, who was immensely rich, — • 
which my father was not ; and immensely tall, — which 
my father was not. It was always a point with this 
Ghoul to present my dearest relations and friends to my 
youthful mind under circumstances of disparaging con- 
trast. The brother-in-law was riding once through a for- 
est on a magnificent horse (we had no magnificent horse 
at our house), attended by a favorite and valuable New- 
foundland dog (we had no dog), when he found himself 
benighted, and came to an Inn. A dark woman opened 
the door, and he asked her if he could have a bed there. 
She answered yes, and put his horse in the stable, and 
took him into a room where there were two dark men. 
While he was at supper, a parrot in the room began to 
talk, — saying, '' Blood, blood I Wipe up the blood 1 " 


570 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


Upon which one of the dark men wrung the parroUs neck, 
and said he was fond of roasted parrots, and he meant to 
nave this one for breakfast in the morning. After eating 
and drinking heartily, the immensely rich, tall brother-in- 
law went up to bed ; but he was rather vexed, because 
they had shut his dog in the stable, saying that they 
never allowed dogs in the house. He sat very quiet for 
more than an hour, thinking and thinking, when, just as 
his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the 
door. He opened the door, and there was the Newfound- 
land dog I The dog came softly in, smelt about him, 
went straight to some straw in a corner which the dark 
men had said covered apples, tore the straw away, and 
disclosed two sheets steeped in blood. Just at that mo- 
ment the candle went out, and the brother-in-law, looking 
through a chink in the door, saw the two dark men steal- 
ing up stairs ; one armed with a dagger that long (about 
five feet) ; the other carrying a chopper, a sack, and a 
spade. Having no remembrance of the close of this ad- 
venture, I suppose my faculties to have been always so 
frozen with terror at this stage of it, that the power of 
listening stagnated within me for some quarter of an 
hour. 

These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the 
Holly-Tree hearth, to the Roadside Inn, renowned in my 
time in a sixpenny book with a folding plate, representing 
in a central compartment of oval form the portrait of 
Jonathan Bradford, and in four corner compartments four 
incidents of the tragedy with which the name is asso- 
ciated, — colored with a hand at once so free and eco- 
nomical, that the bloom of Jonathan’s complexion passed 
without any pause into the breeches of the ostler, and, 
smearing itself olf into the next division, became rum in 
a bottle. Then I remembered how the landlord was 
found at the murdered traveller’s bedside, with his own 
knife at his feet, and blood upon his hand ; how he was 
hanged for the murder, notwithstanding his protestation 
that he had indeed come there to kill the traveller for his 
saddle-bags, but had been stricken motionless on finding 
him already slain ; and how the ostler, years afterwards, 
owned the deed. By this time I had made myself quite 
uncomfortable. I stirrdd the fire, and stood with my back 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


571 


to it as long as I could bear the heat, looking up at the 
darkness beyond the screen, and at the wormy curtains 
creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in the ballad 
of Alonzo the Brave and the fair Imogene. 

There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went 
to school, which had pleasanter recollections about it 
than any of these. I took it next. It was the Inn where 
friends used to put up, and where we used to go to see 
parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. 
It had an ecclesiastical sign, — the Mitre, — and a bar 
that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it 
was so snug. I loved the landlord’s youngest daughter 
to distraction, — but let that pass. It was in this Inn 
that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I 
had acquired a black eye in a fight. And though she 
had been, that Holly-Tree night, for many a long year 
where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me yet. 

‘‘ To be continued to-morrow,” said I, when I took my 
candle to go to bed. But my bed took it upon itself to 
continue the train of thought that night. It carried me 
away, like the enchanted carpet, to a distant place 
(though still in England), and there, alighting from a 
stage-coach at another Inn in the snow, as I had actually 
done some years before, I repeated in my sleep a curious 
experience I had really had there. More than a year 
before I made the journey in the course of which I put 
up at that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend by 
death. Every night since, at home or away from home, 
I had dreamed of that friend ; sometimes as still living ; 
sometimes as returning from the world of shadows to 
comfort me ; always as being beautiful, placid, and happy, 
never in association with any approach to fear or distress. 
It was at a lonely Inn in a wide moorland place, that I 
halted to pass the night. When I had looked from my 
bedroom window over the waste of snow on which the 
moon was shining, 1 sat down by my fire to write a letter. 
I had always, until that hour, k(ipt it within my own 
breast that I dreamed every night of the dear lost one. 
But in the letter that I wrote I recorded the circumstance, 
and added that I felt much interested in proving whether 
the subject of my dream would still be faithful to me, 
travel-tired, and in that remote place. No. I lost the 


572 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


beloved figure of my vision in parting with the secret. 
My sleep has never looked upon it since, in sixteen years, 
but once. I was in Italy, and awoke (or seemed to 
awake), the well-remembered voice distinctly in my ears, 
conversing with it. I entreated it, as it rose above my 
bed and soared up to the vaulted roof of the old room, to 
answer me a question I had asked touching the Future 
Life. My hands were still outstretched towards it as it 
vanished, when I heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, 
and a voice in the deep stillness of the night calling on 
all good Christians to pray for the souls of the dead ; it 
being All Souls^ Eve. 

To return to the Holly-Tree. When I awoke next day, 
it was freezing hard, and the lowering sky threatened 
more snow. My breakfast cleared away, I drew my 
chair into its former place, and, with the fire getting so 
much the better of the landscape that I sat in twilight, 
resumed my Inn remembrances. 

That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put 
up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale, and before 
all beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury 
Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice win- 
dow came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was 
a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally pre- 
served Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), 
with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking 
afar ofi'; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who 
seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the 
verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that 
had been mutton for many ages. He was a man with a 
weird belief in him that no one could count the stones of 
Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them ; 
likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine 
times, and then stood in the centre and said, “ I dare 1 
would behold a tremendous apparition, and be stricken 
dead. He pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect 
him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner fol- 
lowing : He was out upon the plain at the close of a late 
autumn day, when he dimly discerned, going on before 
him at a curious fitfully bounding pace, what he at first 
supposed to be a gig-umbrella that had been blown from 
some conveyance, but what he presently believed to be a 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


573 


lean dwarf man upon a little pony. Having followed thia 
object for some distance without gaining on it, and hav- 
ing called to it many times without receiving any answer, 
he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at length coming 
up with it, he discovered it to be the last bustard in Great 
Britain, degenerated into a wingless state, and running 
along the ground. Resolved to capture him or perish in 
the attempt, he closed with the bustard ; but the bustard, 
who had formed a counter-resolution that he should do 
neither, threw him, stunned him, and was last seen mak- 
ing off due west. This weird man, at that stage of me- 
tempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker or an enthu- 
siast or a robber ; but I awoke one night to find him in 
the dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed 
in a terrific voice. I paid my bill next day, and retired 
from the county with all possible precipitation. 

That was not a commonplace story which worked itself 
out at a little Inn in Switzerland, while I was staying 
there. It was a very homely place, in a village of one 
narrow, zigzag street among mountains, and you went in 
at the main door through the cow-house, and among the 
mules and the dogs and the fowls, before ascending a 
great bare staircase to the rooms ; which were all of un- 
painted wood, without plastering or papering, — like 
rough packing-cases. Outside there was nothing but the 
straggling street, a little toy church with a copper-colored 
steeple, a pine forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides. 
A young man belonging to this Inn had disappeared eight 
weeks before (it was winter-time), and was supposed to 
have had some undiscovered love affair, and to have gone 
for a soldier. He had got up in the night, and dropped 
into the village street from the loft in which he slept with 
another man ; and he had done it so quietly, that his 
companion and fellow-laborer had heard no movement 
when he was awakened in the morning, and they said, 
Louis, where is Henri ? ” They looked for him high 
and low, in vain, and gave him up. Now, outside this 
Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every dwelling in 
the village, a stack of firewood ; but the stack belonging 
to the Inn was higher than any of the rest, because the 
Inn was the richest house, and burnt the most fuel. It 
began to be noticed, while they were looking high and 


574 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live stock of the Inn, 
j»ut himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top 
of this wood-stack ; and that he would stay there for 
hours and hours, crowing, until he appeared in danger 
of splitting himself. Five weeks went on, --six weeks, 
— and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his domestic 
affairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing 
the very eyes out of his head. By this time it was per- 
ceived that Louis had become inspired with a violent ani- 
mosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one morning he 
was seen by a woman, who sat nursing her goitre at a 
little window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet 
of wood, with a great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam 
crowing on the wood-stack, and bring him down dead. 
Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her mind, 
stole round to the back of the wood-stack, and, being a 
good climber, as all those women are, climbed up, and 
soon was seen upon the summit, screaming, looking down 
the hollow within, and crying, Seize Louis, the murder- 
er I Ring the church bell I Here is the body I I saw 
the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire 
at the Holly-Tree Inn, and 1 see him now, lying shackled 
with cords on the stable litter, among the mild eyes and 
the smoking breath of the cows, waiting to be taken away 
by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A 
heavy animal, — the dullest animal in the stables, — with 
a stupid head, and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of 
sensibility, who had been, within the knowledge of the 
murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys 
belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful 
mode of putting a possible accuser out of his way. All 
of which he confessed next day, like a sulky wretch who 
could n’t be troubled any more, now that they had got 
hold of him, and meant to make an end of him. I saw 
him once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. 
In that Canton the headsman still does his office with a 
sword ; and I came upon this murderer sitting bound to 
a chair, with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold in a little 
market-place. In that instant, a great sword (loaded with 
quicksilver in the thick part of the blade), swept round 
him like a gust of wind or fire, and there was no such 
creature in the world. My wonder was, not that he was 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


575 


SO suddenly despatched, but that any head was left un- 
reaped, within a radius of fifty yards of that tremendous 
sickle. 

That was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful land- 
lady and the honest landlord, where I lived in the shadow 
of Mont Blanc, and where one of the apartments has a 
zoological papering on the walls, not so accurately joined 
but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger^s 
hind legs and tail, while the lion puts on a trunk and 
tusks, and the bear, moulting as it were, appears as to 
portions of himself like a leopard. I made several Ameri- 
can friends at that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc Mount 
Blank, — except one good-humored gentleman, of a very 
sociable nature, who became on such intimate terms with 
it that he spoke of it familiarly as “ Blank ; observing, 
at breakfast, '‘Blank looks pretty tall this morning 
or considerably doubting in the court-yard in the evening, 
whether there warn’t some go-ahead naters in our coun- 
try, sir, that would make out the top of Blank in a couple 
of hours from first start — now ! 

Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of 
England, where I was haunted by the ghost of a tremen- 
dous pie. It was a Yorkshire pie, like a fort, — an aban- 
doned fort with nothing in it ; but the waiter had a fixed 
idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put 
the pie on the table. After some days I tried to hint, in 
several delicate ways, that I considered the pie done 
with ; as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of glasses 
of wine into it ; putting cheese-plates and spoons into it, 
as into a basket ; putting wine-bottles into it, as into a 
cooler; but always in vain, the pie being invariably 
cleaned out again and brought up as before. At last, 
beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim 
of a spectral illusion, and whether my health and spirits 
might not sink under the horrors of an imaginary pie, I 
cut a triangle out of it, fully as large as the musical in- 
strument of that name in a powerful orchestra. Human 
prevision could not have foreseen the result — but the 
waiter mended the pie. With some effectual species of 
cement, he adroitly fitted the triangle in again, and I 
paid my reckoning and fled. 

The ilolly-Tree was getting rather dismal. I made an 


576 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


overland expedition beyond the screen, and penetrated as 
far as the fourth window. Here I was driven back by 
stress of weather. Arrived at my winter-quarters once 
more, I made up the fire, and took another Inn. 

It was in the remotest part of Cornwall. A great 
annual Miners^ Feast was being holden at the Inn, when 
I and my travelling companions presented ourselves at 
night among the wild crowd that were dancing before it 
by torchlight. We had had a breakdown in the dark, 
on a stony morass some miles away; and I had the honor 
of leading one of the unharnessed post-horses. If any 
lady or gentleman on perusal of the present lines will 
take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging 
about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein 
into the heart of a country dance of a hundred and fifty 
couples, that lady or gentleman will then, and only then, 
form an adequate idea of the extent to which that post- 
horse will tread on his conductor’s toes. Over and above 
which, the post-horse, finding three hundred people whirl- 
ing about him, will probably rear, and also lash out with 
his hind legs, in a manner incompatible with dignity or 
self-respect on his conductor’s part. With such little 
drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared 
at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cor- 
nish Miners. It was full, and twenty times full, and 
nobody could be received but the post-horse, — though 
to get rid of that noble animal was something. While 
my fellow-travellers and I were discussing how to pass 
the night and so much of the next day as must intervene 
before the jovial blacksmith and the jovial wheelwright 
would be in a condition to go out on the morass and 
mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the 
crowd and proposed his unlet floor of two rooms, with 
supper of eggs and bacon, ale and punch. We joyfully 
accompanied him home to the strangest of clean houses, 
where we were well entertained to the satisfaction of all 
parties. But the novel feature of the entertainment was, 
that our host was a chair-maker, and that the chairs as*- 
signed to us were mere frames, altogether without bot- 
toms of any sort ; so that we passed the evening on 
perches. Nor was this the absurdest consequence ; for 
tvhen we unbent at supper, and any one of us gave way 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


577 


to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his position, and 
instantly disappeared. I myself, doubled up into an at- 
titude from which self-extrication was impossible, was 
taken out of my frame, like a clown in a comic panto- 
mime who has tumbled into a tub, five times by the 
taper^s light during the eggs and bacon. 

The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of 
loneliness. I began to feel conscious that my subject 
would never carry me on until I was dug out. I might 
be a week here, — weeks I 

There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected 
with an Inn I once passed a night at in a picturesque old 
town on the Welsh border. In a large, double-bedded 
room of this Inn there had been a suicide committed by 
poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept uncon- 
scious in the other. After that time, the suicide bed was 
never used, but the other constantly was ; the disused 
bedstead remaining in the room empty, though as to all 
other respects in its old state. The story ran, that who- 
soever slept in this room, though never so entire a stran- 
ger, from never so far off, was invariably observed to 
come down in the morning with an impression that he 
smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned upon 
the subject of suicide ; to which, whatever kind of man 
he might be, he was certain to make some reference if he 
conversed with any one. This went on for years, until 
it at length induced the landlord to take the disused bed- 
stead down, and bodily burn it, — bed, hangings, and all. 
The strange influence (this was the story) now changed 
to a fainter one, but never changed afterwards. The oc- 
cupant of that room, with occasional but very rare ex- 
ceptions, would come down in the morning, trying to 
recall a forgotten dream he had had in the night. The 
landlord, on his mentioning his perplexity, would suggest 
various commonplace subjects, not one of which, as ho 
very well knew, was the true subject. But the moment 
the landlord suggested, “ Poison,’’ the traveller started, 
and cried, Yes ! ” He never failed to accept that sug. 
gestion, and he never recalled any more of the dream. 

This reminiscence brought the Welsh Inns in general 
before me ; with the women in their round hats, and the 
harpers with their white beards (venerable, but humbugs, 


578 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


I am afraid), playing outside the door while I took my 
dinner. The transition was natural to the Highland Inns, 
with the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, 
the trout from the loch, the whiskey, and perhaps (having 
the materials so temptingly at hand) the Athol brose. 
Once was I coming south from the Scottish Highlands in 
hot haste, hoping to change quickly at the station at the 
bottom of a certain wild historical glen, when these eyes 
did with mortification see the landlord come out with a 
telescope and sweep the whole prospect for the horses ; 
which horses were away picking up their own living, and 
did not heave in sight under four hours. Having thought 
of the loch-trout, I was taken by quick association to the 
Anglers^ Inns of England (I have assisted at innumerable 
feats of angling by lying in the bottom of the boat, whole 
summer days, doing nothing with the greatest persever- 
ance ; which I have generally found to be as effectual 
towards the taking of fish as the finest tackle and the ut- 
most science), and to the pleasant white, clean, flower- 
pot-decorated bedrooms of those inns, overlooking the 
river, and the ferry, and the green ait, and the church- 
spire, and the country bridge ; and to the peerless Emma 
with the bright eyes and the pretty smile, who waited, 
bless her I with a natural grace that would have con- 
verted Blue-Beard. Casting my eyes upon my Holly-Tree 
fire, I next discerned among the glowing coals the pic- 
tures of a score or more of those wonderful English post- 
ing-inns which we are all so sorry to have lost, which 
were so large and so comfortable, and which were such 
monuments of British submission to rapacity and extor- 
tion. He who would see these houses pining away, let 
him walk from Basingstoke, or even Windsor, to London, 
by way of Hounslow, and moralize on their perishing 
remains ; the stables crumbling to dust ; unsettled labor- 
ers and wanderers bivouacking in the out-houses ; grass 
growing in the yards ; the rooms, where erst so many 
hundred beds of down were made up, let off to Irish 
lodgers at eighteen-pence a week ; a little ill-looking beer- 
shop shrinking in the tap of former days, burning coach- 
house gates for firewood, having one of its two windows 
bunged up, as if it had received punishment in a fight 
with the railroad ; a low, bandy-legged, brick-making bull- 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


579 


dog standing in the doorway. What could I next see in 
my fire so naturally as the new railway-house of these 
times near the dismal country station ; with nothing par- 
ticular on draught but cold air and damp, nothing worth 
mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no business 
doing beyond a conceited affectation of luggage in the 
hall ? Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty 
apartment of four pieces up one hundred and seventy-five 
waxed stairs, the privilege of ringing the bell all day 
long without influencing anybody's mind or body but 
your own, and the not-too-much-for dinner, considering 
the price. Next to the provincial Inns of France, with 
the great church-tower rising above the court-yard, the 
horse-bells jingling merrily up and down the street be- 
yond, and the clocks of all descriptions in all the rooms, 
which are never right, unless taken at the precise minute 
when, by getting exactly twelve hours too fast or too 
slow, they unintentionally become so. Away I went, 
next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy ; where all the 
dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are always lying 
in your anteroom ; where the mosquitoes make a raisin 
pudding of your face in summer, and the cold bites it 
blue in winter ; where you get what you can, and forget 
what you can^t ; where I should again like to be boiling 
my tea in a pocket-handkerchief dumpling, for want of a 
teapot. So to the old palace Inns and old monastery Inns, 
in towns and cities of the same bright country ; with their 
massive quadrangular staircases, whence you may look 
from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of 
Heaven ; with their stately banqueting-rooms, and vast 
refectories ; with their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, 
and their glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no 
appearance of reality or possibility. So to the close little 
Inns of the Malaria districts, with their pale attendants, 
and their peculiar smell of never letting in the air. So 
to the immense fantastic Inns of Venice, with the cry of 
the gondolier below, as he skims the corner ; the grip of 
the watery odors on one particular little bit of the bridge 
of your nose (which is never released while you stay 
there) ; and the great bell of St. Markus Cathedral tolling 
midnight. Next I put up for a minute at the restless 
Inns upon the Rhine, where your going to bed, no matter 


580 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for everybody 
else^s getting up ; and where, in the table d^hote room at 
the end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel 
on it at the other end, all made of white plates), one knot 
of stoutish men, entirely dressed in jewels and dirt, and 
having nothing else upon them, will remain all night, 
clinking glasses, and singing about the river that flows, 
and the grape that grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, 
and Rhine woman that smiles and hi drink drink my 
friend and ho drink drink my brother, and all the rest of 
it. I departed thence, as a matter of course, to other 
German Inns, where all the eatables are sodden down to 
the same flavor, and where the mind is disturbed by the 
apparition of hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and 
slab, at awfully unexpected periods of the repast. After 
a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming glass jug, and 
a glance of recognition through the windows of the stu- 
dent beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out 
to sea for the Inns of America, with their four hundred 
beds apiece, and their eight or nine hundred ladies and 
gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I stood in the 
bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, 
or cocktail. Again I listened to my friend the General, 
— whom I had known for flve minutes, in the course of 
which period he had made me intimate for life with two 
Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with 
three Colonels, who again had made me brother to 
twenty-two civilians, — again I say, I listened to my 
friend the General, leisurely expounding the resources of 
the establishment, as to gentlemen^s morning-room, sir ; 
ladies^ morning-room, sir ; gentlemen^s evening-room, sir ; 
ladies’ evening-room, sir ; ladies’ and gentlemen’s even- 
ing rcuniting-room, sir ; music-room, sir ; reading-room, 
sir ; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir ; and the entire 
planned and finited within twelve calendar months from 
the flrst clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, 
at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars, sir. Again I 
found, as tc my individual way of thinking, that the 
greater, the more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the 
establishment was, the less desirable it was. Neverthe- 
less, again I drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, 
in all good-will, to my friend the General, and my friends 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


581 


the Majors, Colonels, and civilians all ; full well knowing 
that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have 
descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large- 
hearted, and great people. 

I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my 
solitude out of my mind ; but here I broke down foi good, 
and gave up the subject. What was I to do ? What 
was to become of me ? Into what extremity was I sub- 
missively to sink ? Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, 
I looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one, and 
beguiled my imprisonment by training it ? Even that 
might be dangerous with a view to the future. I might 
be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through 
the snow, that, on my way forth, I might burst into tears, 
and beseech, like the prisoner who was released in his 
old age from the Bastile, to be taken back again to the 
five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous drapery. 

A desperate idea came into my head. Under any other 
circumstances I should have rejected it ; but, in the strait 
at which I was, I held it fast. Could I so far overcome 
the inherent bashfulness which withheld me from the 
landlord's table and the company I might find there, as 
to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair, — and 
something in a liquid form, — and talk to me ? I could. 
I would. I did. 


582 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


SECOND BRANCH. 

THE BOOTS. 

Where had he been in his time ? he repeated, when I 
asked him the question. Lord, he had been everywhere ! 
And what had he been ? Bless you, he had been every- 
thing you could mention almost I 

Seen a good deal ? Why, of course he had. I should 
say so, he could assure me, if I only knew about a twen- 
tieth part of what had come in his way. Why, it would 
be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he had n^t seen 
than what he had. Ah ! A deal, it would. 

What was the curiousest thing he had seen ? Well I 
He did n’t know. He could n’t momently name what was 
the curiousest thing he had seen, — unless it was a Uni- 
corn, — and he see him once at a Fair. But supposing a 
young gentleman not eight year old was to run away with 
a fine young woman of seven, might I think that a queer 
start ? Certainly ? Then that was a start as he himself 
had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the 
shoes they run away in, — and they was so little that he 
could n’t get his hand into ’em. 

Master Harry Walmers’s father, you see, he lived at the 
Elmses, down away by Shooter’s Hill there, six or seven 
mile from Lunnon. He was a gentleman of spirit, and 
good-looking, and held his head up when he walked, and 
had what you may call Fire about him. He wrote poetry, 
and he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, 
and he acted, and he done it all equally beautiful. He 
was uncommon proud of Master Harry as was his only 
child ; but he did n’t spoil him neither. He was a gen- 
tleman that had a will of his own and a eye of his own, 
and that would be minded. Consequently, though he 
made quite a companion of the fine bright boy, and was 
delighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy books, 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


583 


and was never tired of hearing him say my name is Nor- 
val, or hearing him sing his songs about Young May 
Moons is beaming love, and When he as adores thee has 
left but the name, and that ; still he kept the command 
over the child, and the child was a child, and it ^s to be 
wished more of ^em was I 

How did Boots happen to know all this ? Why, through 
being under-gardener. Of course he could n^t be under- 
gardener, and be always about, in the summer-time, near 
the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and sweeping, and 
weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting 
acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing 
Master Harry had n’t come to him one morning early, 
and said, “ Cobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you 
was asked ? ” and then begun cutting it in print all over 
the fence. 

He could n’t say he had taken particular notice of chil- 
dren before that ; but really it was pretty to see them two 
mites a going about the place together, deep in love. 
And the courage of the boy I Bless your soul, he ’d have 
throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little sleeves, 
and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to 
meet one, and she had been frightened of him. One day 
he stops, along with her, where Boots was hoeing weeds 
in the gravel, and says, speaking up, Cobbs,” he says, 

I like you” ‘‘ Do you, sir ? I’m proud to hear it.” 
“ Yes, I do, Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you think, 
Cobbs ? ” Don’t know. Master Harry, I am sure.” 

Because Norah likes you, Cobbs.” “Indeed, sir? 
That ’s very gratifying.” “ Gratifying, Cobbs ? It ’s 
better than millions of the brightest diamonds to be liked 
by Norah.” “ Certainly, sir.” “ You ’re going away, 
ain’t you, Cobbs ? ” “ Yes, sir.” “ Would you like 

another situation, Cobbs?” “Well, sir, I shouldn’t 
object, if it was a good ’un.” “Then, Cobbs,” says he, 
“ you shall be our Head Gardener when we are married.” 
And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his 
arm, and walks away. 

Boots could assure me that it was better than a picter, 
and equal to a play, to see them babies, with their long, 
bright, curling hair, their sparkling eyes, and their beau- 
tiful, light tread, a rambling about the garden, deep in 


584 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


love. Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they 
was birds, and kept up with ^em, singing to please ^em. 
Sometimes they would creep under the Tulip-tree, and 
would sit there with their arms round one another's 
necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading about 
the Prince, and the Dragon, and the good and bad en- 
chanters, and the king's fair daughter. Sometimes ho 
would hear them planning about having a house in a 
forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely on 
milk and honey. Once he came upon them by the pond, 
and heard Master Harry say, “ Adorable Norah, kiss me, 
and say you love me to distraction, or I '11 jump in 
head-foremost." And Boots made no question he would 
have done it if she hadn't complied. On the whole, 
Boots said it had a tendency to make him feel as if he 
was in love himself, — only he did n't exactly know who 
with. 

Cobbs," said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs 
was watering the flowers, “ I am going on a visit, this 
present Midsummer, to my grandmamma's at York." 

“ Are you indeed, sir ? I hope you '11 have a pleasant 
time. I am going into Yorkshire myself, when I leave 
here." 

“ Are you going to your grandmamma's, Cobbs ? " 

No, sir. I have n't got such a thing." 

“Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs ? " 

“ No sir." 

The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a 
little while, and then said, “ I shall be very glad indeed 
to go, Cobbs, — Norah 's going." 

“You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, “with 
your beautiful sweetheart by your side." 

“ Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, “ I never let 
anybody joke about it, when I can prevent them." 

“ It was n't a joke, sir," says Cobbs, with humility, — 
“ wasn't so meant." 

“I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you 
know, and you 're going to live with us. — Cobbs I " 

“ Sir." 

“ What do you think my grandmamma gives me when 
I go down there ? " 

“ I could n't so much as make a guess, sir." 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


585 


“ A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs. 

Whew I '' says Cobbs, '' that ’s a spanking sum of 
money. Master Harry.^^ 

“ A person could do a good deal with such a sum of 
money as that, — couldn’t a person, Cobbs ? ” 

" I believe you, sir I ” 

Cobbs,” said the boy, “ I ’ll tell you a secret. At 
Norah’s house, they have been joking her about me, and 
pretending to laugh at our being engaged, — pretending 
to make game of it, Cobbs I ” 

Such, sir,” says Cobbs, “is the depravity of human 
natur.” 

The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a 
few minutes with his glowing face towards the sunset, 
and then departed with, “Good night, Cobbs. I’m going 
in.” 

If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a 
going to leave that place just at that present time, well, 
he could n’t rightly answer me. He did suppose he 
might have stayed there till now if he had been anyways 
inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he 
wanted change. That ’s what he wanted, — change. 
‘Mr. Walmers, he said to him when he give him notice of 
his intentions to leave, “Cobbs,” he says, “have you 
any think to complain of? I make the inquiry because if 
I find that any of my people really has anythink to com- 
plain of, I wish to make it right if I can.” “ No, sir,” 
says Cobbs ; “ thanking you, sir, I find myself as well siti- 
wated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The truth 
is, sir, that I ’m a going to seek my fortun.” “ 0, in- 
deed, Cobbs ? ” he says ; “I hope you may find it.” 
And Boots could assure me — which he did, touching his 
hair with his bootjack, as a salute in the way of his pres- 
ent calling — that he had n’t found it yet. 

Well, sir I Boots left the Elmses when his time was 
up, and Master Harry, he went down to the old lady’s 
at York, which old lady would have given that child the 
teeth out of her head (if she had had any), she was so 
wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do, — for 
Infant you may call him and be within the mark, — but 
cut away from that old lady’s with his Norah, on a ex- 
pedition to go to Gretna Green and be married I 


586 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having 
left it several times since to better himself, but always 
come back through one thing or another), when, one 
summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of the 
coach gets them two children. The Guard says to our 
Governor, ‘‘I don^t quite make out these little passengers, 
but the young gentleman^s words was, that they was to 
be brought here.’^ The young gentleman gets out ; 
hands his lady out ; gives the Guard something for him- 
self; says to our Governor, “ We ^re to stop here to-night, 
please. Sitting-room and two bedrooms will be required. 
Chops and cherry pudding for two I and tucks her, in 
her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into 
the house much bolder than Brass. 

Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that 
establishment was, when these two tiny creatures all 
alone by themselves was marched into the Angel, — 
much more so, when he, who had seen them without 
their seeing him, give the Governor his views of the ex- 
pedition they was upon. Cobbs, says the Governor, 
^^if this is so, I must set off myself to York, and quiet 
their friends^ minds. In which case you hiust keep your 
eye upon ^em, and humor ^em, till I come back. But be- 
fore I take these measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to 
find from themselves whether your opinions is correct.^^ 
“ Sir, to you,’^ says Cobbs, that shall be done directly.’^ 

So Boots goes up stairs to the Angel, and there he 
finds Master Harry, on a e-normous sofa, — immense at 
any time, but looking like the Great Bed of Ware, com- 
pared with him, — a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with 
his pocket-hankecher. Their little legs was entirely off the 
ground, of course, and it really is not possible for Boots 
to express to me how small them children looked. 

It ’s Cobbs ! It ^s Cobbs ! ’’ cries Master Harry, 
and comes running to him, and catching hold of his hand. 
Miss Norah comes running to him on t^ other side and 
catching hold of his t’ other hand, and they both jump for 

joy- 

I see you a getting out. sir,’^ says Cobbs. ** I 
thought it was you. I thought I could n^t be mistaken 
in your height and figure. What ^s the object of your 
journey, sir ? — Matrimonial ? ” 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


587 


“ We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green, 
returned the boy. “We have run away on purpose. 
Norah has been in rather low spirits, Cobbs ; but she ^11 
be happy, now we have found you to be our friend. 

“ Thank you, sir, and thank you, miss,^^ says Cobbs, 
“ for your good opinion. Did you bring any luggage 
with you, sir?^^ 

If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and 
honor upon it, the lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bot- 
tle, a round and a half of cold buttered toast, eight pep- 
permint drops, and a hairbrush, — seemingly a dolBs. 
The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of string, 
a knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up 
surprising small, a orange, and a Chaney mug with his 
name upon it. 

“ What may be the exact natur of your plans, sir ? 
says Cobbs. 

“ To go on,^’ replied the boy, — which the courage of 
that boy was something wonderful*! — “in the morning, 
and be married to-morrow. 

“ Just so, sir,^^ says Cobbs. “ Would it meet your 
views, sir, if I was to accompany you ? 

When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, 
and cried out, “ 0 yes, yes, Cobbs I Yes I 

“ Well, sir,’^ says Cobbs. “ If you will excuse my 
having the freedom to give an opinion, what I should 
recommend would be this. I ^m acquainted with a pony, 
sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow, would 
take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself driv- 
ing, if you approved,) to the end of your journey in a 
very short space of time. I am not altogether sure, sir, 
that this pony will be at liberty to-morrow, but even if 
you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be 
worth your while. As to the small account here, sir, in 
case you was to find yourself running at all short, that 
don’t signify ; because I ’m a part proprietor of this inn, 
and it could stand over.” 

Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, 
and jumped for joy again, and called him “Good Cobbs!” 
and “ Dear Cobbs ! ” and bent across him to kiss one 
another in the delight of their confiding hearts, he felt 
himself the meanest rascal for deceiving ’em that ever 
was born. 


588 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


Is there anything you want just at present, sir?^^ 
says Cobbs, mortally ashamed of himself. 

'‘We should like some cakes after dinner, answered 
Master Harry, folding his arms, putting out one leg, and 
looking straight at him, "and two apples, — and jam. 
With dinner we should like to have toast-and-water. 
But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass 
of currant wine at dessert. And so have 

" It shall be ordered at the bar, sir,^^ says Cobbs ; and 
away he went. 

Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute 
of speaking as he had then, that he would far rather have 
had it out in half a dozen rounds with the Governor, than 
have combined with him ; and that he wished with all his 
heart there was any impossible place where those two 
babies could make an impossible marriage, and live im- 
possibly happy ever afterwards. However, as it could n^t 
be, he went into the Governor’s plans, and the Governor 
set oif for York in half an hour. 

The way in which the women of that house — without 
exception — every one of ’em — married and single — 
took to that boy when they heard the story. Boots con- 
siders surprising. It was as much as he could do to 
keep ’em from dashing into the room and kissing him. 
They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of their 
lives, to look at him through a pane of glass. They was 
seven deep at the keyhole. They was out of their minds 
about him and his bold spirit. 

In the evening. Boots went into the room to see how 
the runaway couple was getting on. The gentleman was 
on the window-seat, supporting the lady in his arms. 
She had tears upon her face, and was lying, very tired 
and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder. 

"Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?” says 
Cobbs. 

" Yes, she is tired, Cobbs ; but she is not used to be 
away from home, and she has been in low spirits again. 
Cobbs, do you think you could bring a biffin, please ? ” 

" I ask your pardon, sir,” says Cobbs. " What was it 
you — ? ” 

" I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She 
is very fond of them.” 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


589 


Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, 
and, when he brought it in, the gentleman handed it to 
the lady, and fed her with a spoon, and took a little him- 
self; the lady being heavy with sleep, and rather cross. 

What should you think, sir,’^ says Cobbs, of a cham- 
ber candlestick ? The gentleman approved ; the cham- 
bermaid went first, up the great staircase ; the lady, in 
her sky-blue mantle, followed, gallantly escorted by the 
gentleman ; the gentleman embraced her at her door, and 
retired to his own apartment, where Boots softly locked 
him up. 

Boots could n^t but feel with increased acuteness what 
a base deceiver he was, when they consulted him at 
breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk-and-water, and 
toast and currant jelly, overnight), about the pony. It 
really was as much as he could do, he don^t mind confess- 
ing to me, to look them two young things in the face, 
and think what a wicked old father of lies he had grown 
up to be. Howsomever, he went on a lying like a Trojan 
about the pony. He told ^em that it did so unfortunately 
happen that, the pony was half clipped, you see, and that 
he could n’t be taken out in that state, for fear it should 
strike to his inside. But that he ’d be finished clipping 
in the course of the day, and that to-morrow morning at 
eight o’clock the pheayton would be ready. Boots’s 
view of the whole case, looking back upon it in my room, 
is, that Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to 
give in. She had n’t had her hair curled when she went 
to bed, and she did n’t seem quite up to brushing it her- 
self, and its getting in her eyes put her out. But nothing 
put out Master Harry. He sat behind his breakfast-cup, 
a tearing away at the jelly, as if he had been his own 
father. 

After breakfast. Boots is inclined to consider that they 
drawed soldiers, — at least, he knows that many such 
was found in the fireplace, all on horseback. In the 
course of the morning. Master Harry rang the bell, — • 
it was surprising how that there boy did carry on, — and 
said, in a sprightly way, Cobbs, is there any good walks 
in this neighborhood ? ” 

Yes, sir,” says Cobbs. “There ’s Love Lane.” 

“Get out with you, Cobbs!” — that was that there 
boy’s expression, — “ you ’re joking.” 


590 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


Begging your pardon, sir/^ says Cobbs, there really 
is Love Lane. And a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall 
T be to show it to yourself and Mrs. Harry Walmers, 
Junior.^^ 

Norah, dear,^^ said Master Harry, “ this is curious. 
We really ought to see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, 
my sweetest darling, and we will go there with Cobbs. 

Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself 
to be, when that young pair told him, as they all three 
jogged along together, that they had made up their minds 
to give him two thousand guineas a year as head gar- 
dener, on accounts of his being so true a friend to ^em. 
Boots could have wished at the moment that the earth 
would have opened and swallered him up, he felt so mean, 
with their beaming eyes a looking at him, and believing 
him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well as he 
could, and he took ^em down Love Lane to the water- 
meadows, and there Master Harry would have drownded 
himself in half a moment more, a getting out a water-lily 
for her, — but nothing daunted that boy. Well, sir, they 
was tired out. All being so new and strange to ^em, they 
was tired as tired could be. And they ihid down on a 
bank of daisies, like the children in the wood, leastways 
meadows, and fell asleep. 

Boots don’t know — perhaps I do, — but never mind, 
it don’t signify either way — why it made a man fit to 
make a fool of himself to see them two pretty babies a 
lying there in the clear still sunny day, not dreaming half 
so hard when they was asleep as they done when they 
was awake. But Lord I when you come to think of your- 
self, you know, and what a game you have been up to 
ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor 
sort of a chap you are, and how it ’s always either Yester- 
day with you, or else To-morrow, and never To-day, that ’s 
where it is I 

Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was 
getting pretty clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry 
Walmerses, Junior’s, temper was on the move. When 
Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he 
“ teased her so ” ; and when he says, “ Norah, my young 
May Moon, your Harry tease you ? ” she tells him, Yes ; 
and I want to go home I ” 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


59 ] 


A biled fowl and baked bread - and-butter pudding 
brought Mrs. Walmers up a little ; but Boots could have 
wished, he must privately own to me, to have seen her 
more sensible of the woice of love, and less abandoning 
of herself to currants. However, Master Harry, he kept 
up, and his noble heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Wal- 
mers turned very sleepy about dusk, and began to cry. 
Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per yester- 
day ; and Master Harry ditto repeated. 

About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Gov- 
ernor in a chaise, along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly 
lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused and very serious, both 
at once, and says to our missis, “ We are much indebted 
to you, ma^am, for your kind care of our little children, 
which we can never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray 
ma’am, where is my boy ? ” Our missis says, “ Cobbs 
has the dear child in charge, sir. Cobbs, show Forty I ” 
Then he says to Cobbs, “ Ah, Cobbs I I am glad to see 
you. I understood you was here I ” And Cobbs says, 

Yes, sir. Your most obedient, sir.” 

I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps ; but 
Boots assures me that his heart beat like a hammer, going 
up stairs. “ I beg your pardon, sir,” says he, while 
unlocking the door ; I hope you are not angry with 
Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and 
will do you credit and honor.” And Boots signifies to 
me, that, if the fine boy’s father had contradicted him in 
the daring state of mind in which he then was, he thinks 
he should have “ fetched him a crack,” and taken the 
consequences. 

But Mr. Walmers only says, “ No, Cobbs. No, my 
good fellow. Thank you I ” And, the door being opened, 
goes in. 

Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. 
Walmers go up to the bedside, bend gently down, and 
kiss the little sleeping face. Then he stands looking at 
it for a minute, looking wonderfully like it (they do say 
he ran away with Mrs. Walmers) ; and then he gently 
shakes the little shoulder. 

Harry, my dear boy I Harry ! ” 

Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks 
at Cobbs too. Such is the honor of that mite, that he 


592 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


looks at CobbS; to see whether he has brought him into 
trouble. 

I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress 
yourself and come home.^^ 

Yes, pa.^^ 

Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast 
begins to swell when he has nearly finished, and it swells 
more and more as he stands, at last, a looking at his 
father : his father standing a looking at him, the quiet 
image of him. 

Please may I — the spirit of that little creetur, and 
the way he kept his rising tears down ! — please dear 
pa — may I — kiss Norah before 1 go ? 

You may, my child. 

So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads 
the way with the candle, and they come to that other 
bedroom, where the elderly lady is seated by the bed, 
and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, is fast asleep. 
There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he 
lays his little face down for an instant by the little warm 
face of poor unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, 
Junior, and gently draws it to him, — a sight so touch- 
ing to the chambermaids who are peeping through the 
door, that one of them calls out, “ It ^s a shame to part 
’em I ” But this chambermaid was always, as Boots in- 
forms me, a soft-hearted one. Not that there was any 
harm in that girl. Far from it. 

Finally, Boots says, that ’s all about it. Mr. Walmers 
drove away in the chaise, having hold of Master Harry’s 
hand. The elderly lady and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, 
that was never to be (she married a Captain long after- 
wards, and died in India), went off next day. In con- 
clusion, Boots puts it to me whether I hold with him in 
two opinions : firstly, that there are not many couples on 
their way to be married who are half as innocent of guile 
as those two children ; secondly, that it would be a jolly 
good thing for a great many couples on their way to be 
married, if they could only be stopped in time, and 
brought back separately. 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 




THIRD BRANCH. 

THE BILL. 

I HAD been snowed up a whole week. The time had 
hung so lightly on my hands, that I should have been in 
great doubt of the fact but for a piece of documentary 
evidence that lay upon my table. 

The road had been dug out of the snow on the previous 
day, and the document in question was my Bill. It tes- 
tified emphatically to my having eaten and drunk, and 
warmed myself, and slept among the sheltering branches 
of the Holly-Tree, seven days and nights. 

I had yesterday allowed the road twenty-four hours to 
improve itself, finding that I required that additional mar- 
gin of time for the completion of my task. I had ordered 
my Bill to be upon the table, and a chaise to be at the 
door, at eight o^clock to-morrow evening. It was 
eight o^clock to-morrow evening when I buckled up my 
travelling writing-desk in its leather case, paid my Bill, 
and got on my warm coats and wrappers. Of course, no 
time now remained for my travelling on to add a frozen 
tear to the icicles which were doubtless hanging plenti- 
fully about the farm-house where I had first seen Angela. 
What I had to do was to get across to Liverpool by the 
shortest open road, there to meet my heavy baggage and 
embark. It was quite enough to do, and I had not an 
hour too much time to do it in. 

I had taken leave of all my Holly-Tree friends,— 
almost, for the time being, of my bashfulness too, — and 
was standing for half a minute at the Inn door watching 
the ostler as he took another turn at the cord which tied 
my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw lamps coming 
down towards the Holly-Tree. The road was so padded 
with snow that no wheels were audible ] but all of us 
who were standing at the Inn door saw lamps coming on. 


694 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


and at a lively rate too, between the walls of snow that 
had been heaped up on either side of the track. The 
chambermaid instantly divined how the case stood, and 
called to the ostler, Tom, this is a Gretna job I The 
ostler, knowing that her sex instinctively scented a mar- 
riage, or anything in that direction, rushed up the yard 
bawling, ‘‘ Next four out ! and in a moment the whole 
establishment was thrown into commotion. 

I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man 
who loved and was beloved ; and therefore, instead of 
driving off at once, I remained at the Inn door when the 
fugitives drove up. A bright-eyed fellow, muffled in a 
mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost overthrew 
me. He turned to apologize, and, by Heaven, it was 
Edwin ! 

Charley I said he, recoiling. Gracious powers I 
what do you do here ? ” 

“ Edwin, said I, recoiling, gracious powers ! what 
do you do here 1 I struck my forehead as I said it, and 
an insupportable blaze of light seemed to shoot before my 
eyes. 

He hurried me into the little parlor (always kept with 
a slow fire in it and no poker), where posting company 
waited while their horses were putting to, and, shutting 
the door, said, — 

Charley, forgive me I 

Edwin I I returned. “Was this well? When I 
loved her so dearly ! When I had garnered up my heart 
so long I I could say no more. 

He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and 
made the cruel observation, that he had not thought 1 
should have taken it so much to heart. 

I looked at him. I reproached him no more. But I 
looked at him. 

“ My dear, dear Charley, said he, “ don^t think ill of 
me, I beseech you I I know you have a right to my ut- 
most confidence, and, believe me, you have ever had it 
until now. I abhor secrecy. Its meanness is intolerable 
to me. But I and my dear girl have observed it for your 
sake.^^ 

He and his dear girl ! It steeled me. 

“ You have observed it for my sake, sir ? said I, won- 
dering how his frank face could face it out so. 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


595 


** Yes I — and Angela^s/^ said he. 

I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, 
like a laboring humming-top. “ Explain yourself/' said 
I, holding on by one hand to an arm-chair. 

“ Dear old darling Charley ! " returned Edwin, in his 
cordial manner, ‘'consider! When you were going on 
so happily with Angela, why should I compromise you 
with the old gentleman by making you a party to our 
engagement, and (after he had declined my proposals) to 
our secret intention ? Surely it was better that you 
should be able honorably to say, ‘ He never took counsel 
with me, never told me, never breathed a word of it.' 
If Angela suspected it, and showed me all the favor and 
support she could, — God bless her for a precious crea- 
ture and a priceless wife I — I could n't help that. Nei- 
ther I nor Emmeline ever told her, any more than we told 
you. And for the same good reason, Charley ; trust me, 
for the same good reason, and no other upon earth ! " 

Emmeline was Angela's cousin. Lived with her. Had 
been brought up with her. Was her father's ward. Had 
property. 

“ Emmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin ? " said I, 
embracing him with the greatest affection. 

“ My good fellow ! " said he, “ do you suppose I should 
be going to Gretna Green without her ? " 

I ran out with Edwin, 1 opened the chaise door, I took 
Emmeline in my arms, I folded her to my heart. She 
was wrapped in soft white fur, like the snowy landscape ; 
but was warm, and young, and lovely. I put their lead- 
ers to with my own hands, I gave the boys a five-pound 
note apiece, I cheered them as they drove away, I drove 
the other way myself as hard as I could pelt. 

I never went to Liverpool, I never went to America, 
I went straight back to London, and I married Angela. 
I have never until this time, even to her, disclosed the 
secret of my character, and the mistrust and the mistaken 
journey into which it led me. When she, and they, and 
our eight children and their seven, — I mean Edwin's and 
Emmeline's, whose eldest girl is old enough now to wear 
white fur herself, and to look very like her mother in it, 
— come to read these pages, as of course they will, I 
shall hardly fail to be found out at last. Never mind 1 I 


596 


THE HOLLY-TREE. 


can bear it. I began at the Holly-Tree, by idle accident, 
to associate the Christmas time of year with human inter- 
est, and with some inquiry into, and some care for, the 
lives of those by whom I find myself surrounded. I hope 
that I am none the worse for it, and that no one near me 
or afar off is the worse for it. And 1 say. May the green 
Holly-Tree fiourish, striking its roots deep into our Eng- 
lish ground, and having its germinating qualities carried 
by the birds of Heaven all over the world I 












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